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Florence Pugh hits out at Meta for censoring post about Cornell rape

Jessica Schladebeck, New York Daily News on

Published in Entertainment News

NEW YORK — Florence Pugh will keep speaking her mind — even after Meta restricted her social media post about the alleged gang rape at Cornell University.

The Oscar-nominated actress opened up about the incident in a new interview for Elle’s Women in Hollywood issue released on Tuesday.

“No one f—ing censors me,” she said. “Don’t even try. That’s just going to add fuel to the fire.”

Pugh took to Instagram back in September, penning a powerful post about a lawsuit filed by a former Cornell student, who said she was raped by members of the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024.

“After reading about the young woman who was gang raped at her college by her friend and school peers, I am feeling uneasy and sick and anxious,” she wrote.

Pugh then called on men to be just as “horrified and sickened” as women, and to lead “conversations about how we change the allowance and complicity of this behavior as much as we are.” She also described sexual assault as the “killing of a soul” and “destroying of the body” before taking aim at universities for not doing enough to protect women.

“Colleges/schools/universities repeatedly fail women around the world,” she wrote, adding, “You build men that get taught through time and time again that they can do extreme harm and that they won’t be harmed in return.”

 

Shortly thereafter, the “East of Eden” actress shared another post, claiming Instagram “decided to block my post from getting in front of the right people.” She added: “Tut tut tut. Oh dear. That doesn’t look great does it?”

In her sit-down with Elle, Pugh said she felt compelled to speak out as “a woman who cares about women,” emphasizing the importance of fighting against “abuse and rape being accepted as a norm.”

“Rape can never ever be a conversation that we move on from,” she said. “It has to be something that we look at face-on, and we demand justice, accountability and for the rapist to see what they have done to someone’s life. Because if we don’t, we’re accepting it. And I don’t ever, ever, ever want to live in a world where we move on from it easily.”

Meta previously told TMZ that Pugh’s post was flagged for sensitive content, but said the restriction was lifted after review.

“We have rules about content describing sexual violence and exploitation in order to protect victims, warn people before seeing content they might find upsetting, and prevent teens from seeing content not appropriate for their age,” it said at the time.

“A label was initially applied to the post, warning people that the content may be sensitive before they were able to click through,” it continued. “We removed this label upon further review after we determined that it qualified for a newsworthy allowance. The post is now live and visible without restrictions for adults.”


©2026 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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