Dear Ian Brown,

You are not my sunshine. Contrary to the picture you’ve sketched of the man-gaze as a warm and noble gift to womankind, without which we would “wither” like a flower stuck in the shade, my world does not revolve around your lusty gaze.

There is one thing we have in common.

I look at women too. I like admiring driftwood-smooth skin and moist apple-butter lips between sips of sangria on a warm summer day. I also like “lively calves,” “curly hair” and “signs of health.” This is what we share.

And these are the things we do not:

1. I do not tend to see the world only through the shallow lens of mini-skirts on bicycles. I admire the beauty of the female body (and those of all genders for that matter), but I also admire sharp minds, eloquence in conversation, passionate engagement with the world, and compelling storytelling, among other traits. Not to mention the titillating beauty of non-human forms and forces: the smell of baking bread wafting through traffic, a front yard full of native plants and the creatures that feed from them, artfully crafted architecture, a blade of grass emerging through broken concrete, the sky. I can’t remember ever spending an entire day admiring nothing more than women’s bodies. I am sorry that your world has become so shallow.

2. We do not live in a society where people like me (young queer women) systematically harass, assault, rape and kill people like you (old heterosexual men). If we did, I might be inclined to acknowledge my position in the dominant and oppressive demographic and make it my responsibility to actively oppose systemic, gender-based violence through my actions and widely published words.

3. Society has not robbed me of accountability as it has done to you. I do not feel hopelessly out of control in my admiration of physical human beauty. I know that I can help myself. And lest you get all “woe is the helpless horny male” on me, let me inform you that looking away has absolutely nothing to do with your penis; it has to do with your neck, head and eyes, like this [demo]. It pains me that you and so many other white men have managed to reach such a ripe old age without such basic education in anatomy. But old dogs can learn new tricks – please, use this one next time someone looks uncomfortable under your hungry gaze.

4. The thought that someone might wither and die without my visual attention, like a frail flower without sunshine, has never once crossed my mind. That it did cross the mind of one of your peers, and that he felt entitled to express it to you, and that you felt it had enough validity to include in this article, which then passed under the careful eyes of, I presume, several editors and remained in the final published version, speaks volumes of the pervasiveness of misogynist self-entitlement in our society and our corporate media.

5. I take issue with the rigid gender binary that your article drives home. The distinct division between male and female qualities doesn’t leave room for anyone who exists outside of those categories: Men who are not attracted to women, for example. Or people like me, for whom sexual attraction is not limited to a particular gender. Or the many people who do not identify as either male or female, but somewhere in between, for whom our forms never have enough boxes. And then there are the many straight men I know who have learned how to perform their masculinity in ways that don’t leave women feeling skin-deep – men who have given their time and privilege and ego over to educating themselves about gender oppression and listening to the stories of women, who have learned how to communicate in less violent ways, how to be vulnerable or to step aside when that’s needed; how to treat women like equal partners instead of sex objects.

6. I did not publish an article in a national newspaper on the woes of my long day riding my bike around town gazing at women. In fact, I’d have never even thought to pitch such a story to the Globe. Now that I know they’re interested in these themes, I’ll draft a query. Think they’d take it? I can see the headline now: “Feminist angry about man-gaze.”

Oh, there’s one more thing we almost have in common. Your bike tour and all the stimulating scenery it offered left you nearly exhausted. I’m exhausted too.

I’m tired of having to prove that I am deeper than flesh – that I have value beyond the sexual arousal I can offer to men. I’m tired of feeling unsafe – of wondering if a gaze is just a gaze, a catcall just an innocent compliment from a well-meaning stranger, and of half-fearing, half-knowing that it’s not. I’m tired of hearing about the hundreds of thousands of my sisters that are abused, murdered and disappeared at the hands of their intimate others. And I’m tired of having to educate the men in my life about all of this. I’m tired of having to fill in the gaps where our education system and family values have failed us – of explaining that women are not possessions or works of art; we do not exist for the consumption and pleasure of men; and I’m tired of seeing whole generations of women perpetuating this hierarchy themselves because being obedient and sexually attractive is the only way we know how to get attention.

Shayna Stock is a freelance writer and community builder in Regina, Saskatchewan. This was originally posted as a video.