Within 24 hours of my friend telling me about the new Web site dontdatehimgirl .com–where women list all the men who have cheated on them as a warning to others–I had gone through all 400 posted entries, looking for anyone I knew.
I found two: Jude Law and Eric Benet. The anonymous posting for Benet reads, “Ladies, Beware of this guy! He even cheated on actress Halle Berry, so you know he’ll cheat on you! Don’t Date Him Girl!”
At first glance, the site is a great solution to the huge information hole about guys and their histories. It lists only 505 men now, but the site’s creator, Miami-based entrepreneur Tasha Joseph, is ambitious. She has hundreds of more cheaters who need to be posted. She also writes a blog that analyzes different cheating-related topics, including the military’s adultery policy and a study on genes that might be connected to cheating tendencies.
Joseph, who at 33 is in what she calls a “committed” relationship, envisions the site as an empowering tool for women. If every cheating guy is eventually posted, it will become the universal dating background check tool, she says.
And she’s not worried about getting sued, mostly because she had a team of lawyers help her set up the site and create a terms of use form that women have to agree to before posting cheaters. “We put the onus on women who use the site to make sure she’s telling us the truth. … We have no liability,” she says. Plus, she adds, “Truth is the absolute defense to libel.”
Her team, which includes a handful of employees and interns, e-mails cheaters before their name is posted as a courtesy. The e-mail informs the men that their name and, in some cases, photos will be posted and gives them a chance to respond to the charges. If they want, they can post their response next to their entry. “We want to be fair,” Joseph says.
Since the site launched in July, only one alleged cheater has complained, Joseph says. He said that he did cheat, but not in the way it was described on the Web site. Joseph gave him the opportunity to post his response on the site.
Joseph, who is spending less and less time on her former job as a publicist, is a savvy businesswoman. Women can post and read the site for free, and she says it’s profitable through its advertising and merchandise. Joseph also bought similar domain names so other companies can’t steal her idea. If a guy wants to do a companion site for female cheaters, that’s fine with her, but not under a copycat name.
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Like Joseph, I haven’t been cheated on since I was a teenager, so I’m visiting the site more as a gawker than an actual information-seeker or provider. But something else about the site is also keeping me from signing up as a regular (which gets you the free newsletter). Is it really true that if you cheat on someone at age 22 you should be branded as a cheater forever? Aren’t there different kinds of cheating? Falling in love with someone while you’re casually dating someone else can’t be as bad as cheating on a spouse, can it?
Joseph says she doesn’t make judgments; she just lets people tell their stories and then lets viewers decide for themselves. I see her point–she’s just facilitating the spread of information.
But how far do you take that philosophy? Should we also have Web sites identifying guys infected with sexually transmitted diseases, or a directory of all guys with information about their past relationships? Then you could skip over your first few dates and pre-select the guys with appealing histories. Sort of like all the dating Web sites out there, but with most of the information entered by people other than the guy himself.
That scares me a little, mostly because I’d hate to think what my entry in a directory of women would look like. Everyone makes mistakes. Now everyone else can know about them.
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