How can we hold sexual desire without causing harm?

Lust is a deadly sin.

Lust is a psychological need for reproduction.

Lust is physical attraction.

Lust is uncontrollable.

Lust is biological.

Lust is demonic.

Lust is objectification.

Lust is reducing someone as a source of gratification.

These were the religious, social and cultural beliefs I inherent growing up. 

For thousands of years, lust has been seen as something dangerous, weakening, selfish, uncontrollable and objectifying. This is because the key belief of lust is that it lacks self-control which leads to actions like sexual greed, rape, dishonesty, pedophelia or betrayal, etc. Religious traditions especially shaped our understanding of lust as something destructive that further carried within our modern society.

This fear is understandable though. Desire without accountability can become quite  harmful. Lust has been associated with betrayal, manipulation, coercion, harassment and violence. And history has repeatedly proven what can happen when people treat desire as justification rather than responsibility, further turning lust into something shameful.

The demonization of lust has created a big contradiction within society where we are taught to restrain lust while simultaneously eroticizing the body. It seems like the more we condemn desire, the more sensational it becomes. Which created the exact type of confusion and complexity we experience within lust.

Especially growing up in a Catholic household , for me lust was rarely spoken of as a normal human experience. More often than not, it came with the feelings of spiritual guilt and disgust that sometimes still shape how I view desire today. 

For a long time I believed that lust was inherently wrong.

As I grew older and experienced love I had to explore these myths on lust myself. Through my exploration of monogamy, non-monogamy and sexual freedom, I came to truly understand the vast difference between love and lust — some easy and some hard ones. 

Sometimes, they felt completely separate and sometimes they felt extremely similar. 

One was rooted in emotional care and the other was rooted in a longing desire. This complexity created a confusion for a bit, because I later realized that it wasn’t about the cultural, religious and social definitions of lust that defined it, but rather about my own experiences and the feelings lust has evoked in me: disappointment, desire, attraction, joy, pain, satisfaction, pleasure. Not always pure, but not always empty either.

You can love someone and still objectify them.

You lust for someone and still respect them.

Lust after all was not fixed.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines lust as “A very strong sexual desire”. 

However, the definition of lust is very subjective depending on someone’s values, personal experiences or upbringing.

For some it gives freedom, for others it represents moral failure.

I believe a person — regardless of their gender, can feel a strong feeling of desire for someone and still recognize their autonomy, emotions and personhood. 

Attraction does not automatically mean that we can automatically remove empathy and desire doesn’t instantly have to mean objectification. 

The problem is that society has seriously gotten lost in the definition of lust and turned it into the worst expression of sexual desire. And it might take a lot for us to come to an overarching agreement to what it truly is at the end since it is more subjective than objective.

The gendered dimension of this hasn’t helped at all. Social patterns show that men, in many contexts, more than women tend to act in a more lustful way that is disrespectful and objectifying. Actions such as infidelity, catcalling, sexual greed, sexual assault, sex buying stays in the same narrative that men are inherently “dogs”.

The high rate of rape and sexual harrasment has continuesly been defended by the fact that man are biologically more lustful than women due to their hormones.

This creates a harmful narrative where men are excused for their harmful and violent actions, for them being biologically uncontrollable. For example, actions like cheating have always been excused for this exact reason. Meanwhile women get slut shamed for it (Do you feel the high tension of double standards in this conversation too?). 

But biology alone, shouldn’t condone any of these acts of infidelity, violence or harm.

Claiming that lust naturally makes men act up is exactly what reduces men from having self-control.

The issue here isn’t the human experience of lust, but how society talks about it, teaches it and engages with it as something wrong, rather than something that can be practiced with responsibility, accountability and self- awareness.

It’s not the desire that is the problem but how the desire itself is enacted.

It’s biological, emotional, psychological and deeply human. It can create intimacy, love, pleasure and connection. It can also create pain when separated from empathy and accountability.

Therefore, lust can be practiced ethically. By not denying it, not suppressing it, but having a proper etiquette for it that makes us understand that lust is not something immoral but something that can and should carry responsibility.

Lust can be healthy, playful, fun and exciting if we all choose to act correctly on it, instead of making it an elephant in the room.