Posted on 11/10/2005 10:27:17 AM PST by nickcarraway
A Toronto woman has masterminded a Web-based tool of revenge for scorned women around the world.
Tasha Joseph's DontDateHimGirl.com attracts an average 200,000 hits a day by allowing women to expose their former partners' cheating ways.
After just a few months in operation, the site features profiles of 600 men -- many of them Canadian -- and has another 1,000 under review. Entries include the guy's full name, physical description, history of purported cheating and, in many cases, a recent photograph.
"You know how the FBI has its Most Wanted list?" says Ms. Joseph, now working as a publicist in Miami. "We thought it would be great if you could do that for cheating men. This would be the Most Hated Cheaters list."
If the site's database is any indication, Alberta boys love behaving badly. Edmonton leads the country in male profiles on DontDateHimGirl, followed by Calgary and a number of rural towns throughout the province. Men from Ontario and Quebec are also featured on the site.
"I really do view [the site] as a public service to women," says Ms. Joseph, a self-described two-time victim of infidelity. "It's very treacherous out there in the dating world ... so this is a warning system for women who have been cheated on to warn other women about the guys who've done the cheating."
Traffic on DontDateHimGirl has grown exponentially in the past month alone, with a one-day record of 1,236,000 visitors after the site was featured on NBC TV's Today Show. Ms. Joseph says she receives about 100 new submissions a day but doesn't post them until she has made contact with the women to verify what's written.
She says she also tries to contact the alleged cheaters whenever possible, offering them a chance to tell their side of the story.
"Most of them say that the woman who posted [the profile] is crazy, that something is wrong with her, that they're saints," she says. "But out of the 600 guys on the site, maybe 15 or 20 have used the rebuttal service."
Feminist activist Veronica Arreola, director of the Women in Science and Engineering program at the University of Chicago, likens the site to scrawling a man's name on a bathroom door in high school. Although in favour of women looking out for each other, she isn't convinced posting on sites of this kind is the way to do it.
"I think the energy used for anger would be best served at ensuring that women are protected against STDs the old fashioned way -- sex ed, condoms and preventative medicines such as the new cervical cancer vaccine," Ms. Arreola says.
The men profiled on DontDateHimGirl would probably agree. At present, a number of them are attempting to launch a class-action lawsuit against the site.
But Ms. Joseph, who created the online database with legal counsel, believes she is protected by American law.
According to a privacy lawyer from Halifax, that may not be the case in Canada.
"If the person's reputation is in Canada, and they are in Canada, and likely the person who posted the information is in Canada, there's more than enough connection for Canadian defamation law to apply," says David T.S. Fraser, chair of the privacy practice group at McInnes Cooper. But he hastens to add the statements aren't considered defamatory if they're true.
"If you're a slug," says Mr. Fraser, "it's only appropriate people know you're a slug."
Miss Staplegun is all yours Darks!!!!
*chuckle*
Heck, I'm tempted to throw my name in there AND the name my brothers cat "George"...
Oh, gee, thanks..
;-)
(And here I was, all ready to send her after somebody else...)
LOL, consider that image stolen by me..
;-)
It's a rough world out there!
It is you.
If they had one of these with pictures of cheating women it would be a real hit!
It sure would and I have a few pictures to add.(oh wait, I slashed and burned them all) Never mind!
Yes.
I'm sure George T. Felis would be quite happy to hear that his fuzziness had been entered into the site, but I haven't done that yet.
*sigh*
Still wrestling with the idea.
LOL, thanks.
ROFL! You are SO bad! : )
ping
not sure if your TRYING to be evil...
but I laughed when I saw that!!!!
Thanks for the chuckles....
hehehehe ;)
;)LOL
You see, if men and women would not condone premarital sex and cheating we would not need silly websites like dontdatehimgirl.com
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