Netflix Halts ‘House of Cards’ After Spacey Harassment Claims

Netflix Inc. suspended production of “House of Cards” following a sexual harassment allegation against star Kevin Spacey, putting the future of the company’s defining show in jeopardy.
Production of the sixth and final season of the political drama was just getting underway in Baltimore, though Spacey had yet to arrive. Spacey, 58, who stars as venal politician Frank Underwood, was accused of making sexual advances toward a 14-year-old boy more than 30 years ago.
Kevin Spacey in "House of Cards"
Photographer: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
Netflix and Media Rights Capital, the studio that makes and owns the series, must decide whether to proceed given the allegations against Spacey, an Oscar-winning actor who helped put Netflix on the map as a home of high-end TV. The show was Netflix’s first hit original series, earning critical praise, winning awards and convincing millions of people to sign up for the streaming service.
Executives from Netflix and Media Rights Capital traveled to Baltimore Monday to meet with the cast and crew.
“MRC and Netflix have decided to suspend production on ‘House of Cards’ season six, until further notice, to give us time to review the current situation and to address any concerns of our cast and crew,” the companies said in a statement Tuesday.
The allegations against Spacey have pulled Netflix into the mushrooming controversy over sexual harassment in Hollywood, which has already felled film producers, agents, actors and filmmakers in the past couple weeks. Weinstein Co. fired co-founder Harvey Weinstein for his alleged sexual predation while Amazon.com Inc. sacked the head of its TV and film studio.
Anthony Rapp, a star of the CBS online series “Star Trek: Discovery,” told BuzzFeed he was accosted at age 14 by Spacey at a party in 1986. In a Twitter posting Sunday, the Oscar-winning Spacey apologized for behavior he said he doesn’t remember.

The survey found that overall, men are more likely than women to experience any form of online harassment, which includes physical threats and name-calling, but women expressed more concern about it, according to the survey.
Seventy-percent of women -- and 83% of women 18 to 29 -- believe online harassment is a major problem, the survey found, versus 54% of men -- and 55% of young men.
'Who saw me?'
Annmarie Chiarini, a mother of two and a college English professor who was interviewed for "Shame Nation," knows firsthand how painful online sexual harassment can be.
When she was going through the worst of it, she says, she was afraid to leave her house. "I was at my son's soccer practice, and I was looking around at all the fathers there, and I kept thinking, 'Who saw me?' " said Chiarini, whose revealing photos were posted online without her consent, in an interview. "When you are a victim of online harassment, no place is truly safe."

Annmarie Chiarini
Annmarie Chiarini, a victim of revenge porn, now works to help other victims of online sexual harassment.
Chiarini's experience began with a Facebook request from an old high school boyfriend in 2009, which ultimately led to a romantic relationship. At some point, her boyfriend started begging her for nude photos.
"I was never comfortable with it for a lot of reasons, but ... finally I relented," she said, deciding to share some seminude shots with him.
The relationship started to deteriorate after she says he became extremely possessive and jealous, wanting to know who she was with at all times and accusing her of cheating, so she decided to end it. But her ex wasn't happy and fired off threats: Either she would take him back, or he would put nude photos of her up for auction on eBay. During a call, she says, he told her he would destroy her and then hung up the phone.
The next day, Chiarini said, he followed through on his threat and posted the auction featuring photos of her on eBay. He reposted the photos as quickly as she could request that eBay take them down, she said.
"The first thing I felt really was just, I was embarrassed. I was just embarrassed. I never, just the thought of my sexuality, my body, my privacy being available to others, that was just awful," she said.
She hoped no one would see the pictures, but she would learn that a couple of her students and two of her colleagues saw them.
"I didn't have time to feel angry at him. I didn't have time to feel betrayed. I was panicked. I just wanted it over. I had no one to turn to for help," she said.
She went to the police, who did nothing, she said, telling her that no crime had been committed. At the time, there were no laws in place to protect against this type of online behavior.
She remembers the panic of not knowing where to look to make sure the photos hadn't been shared somewhere else and waking up in the middle of the night on a regular basis to scour the Internet.
"Three a.m. was my witching hour, and for some reason, that's when I would pop awake, and I would have to search Facebook. I would have to search eBay. I would have to google my name. I would have to check all my email accounts," she said.
A year later, she learned that an online profile was created using her seminude images and inviting men to come to her home for sex. She reached out to state police and the FBI for help, and she even contemplated suicide.
"Online abuse is very abstract," she said. "It's the thundering footsteps of an invisible pursuer. You hear it. It's there. It's present. It's 24/7. It's nonstop. It comes at you from all angles, but you don't know, I didn't know who it was."
The site was viewed 3,000 times before a friend figured out how to help her get the photos removed.
"I was so lucky. The average victim who is posted is typically on a minimum of a thousand websites," she said. "There are close to 4,000 websites dedicated to nonconsensual pornography."
After her experiences, she decided to turn her attention to making changes and helped lobby for a new law now in effect in Maryland, making the release of nonconsenual pornographic images a criminal offense.
"I wanted something on the books that would serve as a deterrent with the message that there are consequences for this behavior. This behavior is unacceptable. If you choose to engage in it, there will be consequences," she said.
Many forms of online sexual harassment
Online sexual harassment can take many forms, and Scheff provides numerous examples in "Shame Nation." Those include the case of Jessica Valenti, a columnist with The Guardian who writes about feminism. She announced that she was taking a break from Twitter in 2016 after receiving "a rape and death threat" against her 5-year-old daughter.
At the time, she wrote, "I am sick of this shit. Sick of saying over and over how scary this is, sick of being told to suck it up."
Scheff also mentions the experience of actress Ashley Judd. The University of Kentucky basketball fan shared via Twitter in March 2015 how she was called a host of sexual and derogatory names after she accused another team of "playing dirty" during the NCAA Tournament.
She wrote that when she expressed a "stout" opinion during March Madness, she was called "a whore, c---, threatened with sexual violence." She added, "Not okay.' " In an op-ed for Mic.com, she wrote that what happened to her is the "devastating social norm experienced by millions of girls and women on the Internet." "Online harassers use the slightest excuse (or no excuse at all) to dismember our personhood. My tweet was simply the convenient delivery system for a rage toward women that lurks perpetually. I know this experience is universal."
Sue Scheff











Sue Scheff is the author of "Shame Nation."
Scheff was the victim of online shaming in 2003. As an education consultant who worked with families of troubled teens, she was attacked online by what she calls a "disgruntled client" who she says tried to ruin her career and destroyed her emotional well-being.
"When you are being attacked online, you just go into this deep dark place," Scheff said.
The woman started calling her a "crook" and "con artist" and said that she kidnapped kids and exploited families, Scheff said. Trolls started to pile on, and sexual innuendo began, with people posting that they had red panties that belonged to Scheff and asking others to bid on those panties, she said.
"It was so humiliating. It was horrifying," said Scheff, a mother of two. She didn't take any action until she learned from a psychologist who recommended families to her that they weren't going to see Scheff because of what they found when they googled her name.
"What happens is, they always keep coming back, and they keep saying, 'Do you realize who you are referring us to? Do you know what Google is saying about her?' " Scheff recounted the psychologist telling her.
The implications for her were real: a loss of future clients. "If you are being sexually harassed online or if you have any type of shaming online, your employer, your college admissions (officer), anyone, they're not going to take a moment to decide whether it's Internet fact or Internet fiction," she said. "They're moving on to that next applicant."
Scheff ended up suing the person who attacked her online and won a landmark case in 2006 for Internet defamation. She told her story in the book "Google Bomb: The Untold Story of the $11.3M Verdict That Changed the Way We Use the Internet." She was motivated to write "Shame Nation" after hearing about the tragedies connected to online bullying and harassment, such as the case of Tyler Clementi, a college student who committed suicide after a sexual encounter with a man was streamed online.
"I remembered that dark place that I felt, that place of hopelessness, that place of 'should I end my life?' which I never would," she said. "Being 40-something years old, I had the maturity to know that, you know what, it's going to get better, so this is the importance of a book like 'Shame Nation' to let people know that you can survive it, there are ways to prevent it, and the best part about it is you can overcome it. You redefine your life after you've been shamed."
Advice if you've been harassed online
Her advice to anyone who has faced online sexual harassment or any other online shaming is to report the harasser to the platform and flag it as abusive. Many women are afraid to report it because they may feel embarrassed or humiliated, or wonder if they brought it on themselves.
"I mean, I know initially ... I was like, 'Oh, my God. Did I do something wrong? What did I do?' ... You're thinking, 'Oh, my God, will the authorities think that this was my fault?' And that is sometimes enough to prevent you from wanting to report it, and that's how this escalates, and this is how men or a perpetrator can get away with it," Scheff said.
Samantha Silverberg is a licensed professional counselor who works with Online SOS, a nonprofit that provides confidential and professional support to people experiencing online harassment. In "Shame Nation," she tells Scheff that the most important thing she can do to help victims is make sure that they realize they didn't do anything to deserve it.
"There's a lot of negative self-talk that comes up with you experiencing something like this. I challenge them with evidence. ... People think, 'This only happens to me, and it's something about me,' " Silverberg said.
Chiarini, the victim of revenge porn, also encourages people to collect evidence, which includes taking screen shots and printing out everything related to the abuse. She also says they should research the laws in the state where they live and where their perpetrator resides.
There are also online resources such as the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which has a guide on how to remove photos that were posted against a person's will, and groups like Online SOS, which provides counseling support.
Scheff says victims should tell a friend, because they won't be able to tackle this on their own. "A lot of people try to go at this alone and I did it. For months, I didn't tell anybody. I felt embarrassed. You feel humiliated but tell a friend."
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"Definitely, definitely, definitely talk to someone," Chiarini agreed. She said that her therapist was her lifeline and that as she talked to more people about it, she realized she was not alone.
"Reach out to people. Anybody who's been through this, anybody who works for these nonprofits ... we will stop what we are doing and help you because we know what it's like," she said. "People are so afraid to reach out and to share their story."
Does Smoking Pot Lead To More Sex?
In every group the researchers studied, the more marijuana people smoked the more sex they reported having. Katarina Sundelin/PhotoAlto/Getty Images hide caption
toggle caption Katarina Sundelin/PhotoAlto/Getty Images
In every group the researchers studied, the more marijuana people smoked the more sex they reported having.
Katarina Sundelin/PhotoAlto/Getty Images
Tobacco companies put a lot of effort into giving cigarettes sex appeal, but the more sensual smoke might actually belong to marijuana.
Some users have said pot is a natural aphrodisiac, despite scientific literature turning up mixed results on the subject.
At the very least, a study published Friday in the Journal of Sexual Medicine suggests that people who smoke more weed are having more sex than those who smoke less or abstain. But whether it's cause or effect isn't clear.
The researchers pulled together data from roughly 50,000 people who participated in an annual Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey during various years between 2002 and 2015. "We reported how often they smoke — monthly, weekly or daily — and how many times they've had sex in the last month," says Dr. Michael Eisenberg, a urologist at Stanford University Medical Center and the senior author on the study. "What we found was compared to never-users, those who reported daily use had about 20 percent more sex. So over the course of a year, they're having sex maybe 20 more times."
Women who consumed marijuana daily had sex 7.1 times a month, on average; for men, it was 6.9 times. Women who didn't use marijuana at all had sex 6 times a month, on average, while men who didn't use marijuana had sex an average of 5.6 times a month.
When the researchers considered other potentially confounding factors, such as alcohol or cocaine use, age, religion or having children, the association between more marijuana and more sex held, Eisenberg says. "It was pretty much every group we studied, this pattern persisted," he says. The more marijuana people smoked, the more they seemed to be having sex.
Now, that association doesn't necessarily mean the weed is responsible for the heightened sex drive, says Mitch Earleywine, a psychologist at the University at Albany who has studied cannabis and sex but wasn't involved in this work. "In some surveys, we saw that people [who used cannabis] did have sex more, but it seemed to be mediated by this personality type that's willing to try new things or look for thrills," he says. In other words, it seems that people who like to smoke weed may have other character traits that lead them to be lustier.
Or maybe it really is the weed. "It's possible it makes men or women more interested in sex," Eisenberg says. In one study, researchers found they were able to induce sexual behavior by injecting a cannabinoid, the class of psychoactive compounds in marijuana, into rats. But people aren't rats, of course.
Another study published in 2012 found that women became more aroused when watching erotic films when they had cannabinoids in their system. But that might just be because weed seems to heighten sensory experiences overall. "It gets people to appreciate the moment more anyway," psychologist Earleywine says. "They like food more, find humor in things more easily, so it wouldn't be stunning to think they would enjoy sex more."
Whatever the connection, Eisenberg says his results leads him to think that pot, unlike tobacco which can depress libido and performance, isn't going to take the steam out of one's sex drive. "One question my patients always have is will smoking marijuana frequently negatively impact my sexual function?" Eisenberg says. "We don't want people to smoke to improve sexual function, but it probably doesn't hurt things."
Not everyone agrees with that conclusion. "It's a lot of stretch here," says Dr. Rany Shamloul, a researcher at Ottawa Hospital in Canada who focuses on sexual health and function. He didn't work on the latest study. In an odd Catch-22, Shamloul says that recent research suggests cannabis might actually make it harder for a man's penis to become erect, even if weed might turn people on. "Recent studies have shown cannabinoid receptors in the penis itself, and experiments in the lab show an inhibitory response," he says. "There was basically a mixed result. Cannabis might increase [sexual arousal] frequency in the brain, but also decrease erectile function in the penis."
There is another issue that may throw cold water on cannabis' potential as a love enabler. A frequent side effect of marijuana is a dry mouth, and University at Albany's Earleywine points out that one's mouth might not be the only thing turning arid. "Drying of the mucus membranes is a pretty consistent effect of the plant. Women should keep that in mind when considering cannabis as a sexual aid. I know that some products have THC or cannabinoids in a lubricant, but I haven't seen any actual data on that," he says.
Stanford's Eisenberg says his study doesn't prove the idea that marijuana is getting people into the sack, though he says that is a possibility. There's really only one conclusion he can safely draw from the work: Cannabis users are doing it more.
Bill Would Bar Sex Reassignment Surgery in Children's Health Plan

The Pennsylvania Senate is advancing legislation to bar coverage for sex reassignment surgery in the federally subsidized Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
The Republican-penned bill passed Wednesday, 37-13, over the protests of Democratic lawmakers who called it discriminatory. It now goes to the House for consideration and final amendments.
Senate Republicans say Pennsylvania can’t legally extend such coverage. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration says it expanded the coverage last year to comply with a new Obama administration rule. That rule is on hold in federal court and isn’t being enforced by the Trump administration.
An earlier version of the bill carried a broader ban on transgender services, but Wolf threatened to veto it. Republicans amended it to allow coverage of physician’s services, prescribed drugs or counseling.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a national LGBTQ advocacy group, issued a statement slamming the proposed legislation.
Related
“CHIP saves lives and should be beyond the reach of cynical lawmakers looking to score cheap political points,” HRC Senior Vice President for Policy and Political Affairs JoDee Winterhof said in a statement shared with NBC News. “Protecting children and ensuring they have equal access to healthcare is a nonpartisan issue, and we urge the House Rules committee to reject this harmful amendment.”
The CHIP program currently covers 177,000 children in Pennsylvania.


Young (and Young at Heart) Guys Will Love VigFX 

That little blue pill may provide a temporary hard-on for men at twenty bucks a pop, but there's not much to it beyond that - no long-term increase in sex drive or performance. It's simply a way to rent an erection for 20 minutes, after which it goes away.
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Meaning?

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Typical Client

VigFX is good for guys who want a lot of amazing, thoroughly gratifying sex. That's often younger guys, but we've spoken with many men over 60 who love it too.
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What This Means to YOU
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