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Amna Ilyas and Zhalay Sarhadi have come out against all the self-proclaimed ‘critics’ using their platforms to hate on women and project their misogyny onto the internet.

On Tuesday, Ilyas posted a video on her Instagram account saying she had performed a dance recently and — as is usually the case — there were positive and negative comments on social media.

One person, she said, who referred to himself as a “critic”, called her “cheap”. Upon trying to gauge his credentials, Ilyas said he was just “a man who hated women, because in every one of his videos, he polices the morals of women he doesn’t like — or whose lifestyles he doesn’t like”.

She lambasted men who spread the “evil” of men thinking they get to control how women spend their lives. “[Just because] you have a microphone, you have a platform, you chose to instigate violence against women,” she said.

Ilyas said she had the privilege of being able to ignore and not care about the opinions of such critics, but many women didn’t.

“What happens when you promote this evil, saying that women must spend their lives according to the will of men, is that the women who are [underprivileged], who have men sitting on them like snakes, who are victims of violence and whose lives are already difficult, you are validating the mindset of the men who are subjecting them to violence.”

Ilyas called the people promoting these ideas “murderers” and congratulated them on making “a small amount of money” off of the oppression of women.

Sarhadi also posted on Tuesday saying these people weren’t critics, “they’re just naysayers, they’re just misogynists”.

She said there was “this one doctor who I won’t name”, whose degree may as well be in misogyny the way he passes comments on each and every thing.

Sarhadi also asked the critics if they knew what their content did to underprivileged women “whose lives are already so difficult, who face ridicule and restrictions from their households, society and the men in their lives”.

She said that by targeting women of privilege on the internet, these people were really pushing all women — especially underprivileged ones — back. “You’re giving leverage to men who need to be taught a lesson, who need their minds broadened, so that they start accepting women as humans.”

She said people have a habit of deriding feminism, but the basic principle of feminism wasn’t hate against a gender — it was “cerebral equality”.

“You don’t like women and it’s disgusting,” Sarhadi said, regretting that Ilyas and so many others had to deal with misogyny of this kind.