When Jensen Huang told Nvidia employees on November 8 that he had been “unfaithful” to his wife, there’s a phrase that quickly became omnipresent in the media: Huang had been the victim of a “honey trap”, laid by Alice Huang (no relation), a Singapore-based tech executive identified as a Chinese spy by U.S. intelligence agencies.

“Honey trap,” seriously?

The story behind the phrase is that a good, hardworking man was minding his own business when a serpent of a woman lured him off the righteous path by dishonest means and propositions he, being a man, simply couldn’t refuse. It is assumed that male sex drive is some kind of force of nature that no adult can reasonably be expected to control. So there’s a double sexist stereotype here. Can a 63-year-old billionaire CEO really be supposed to have no say over his sex life? Like a bear wouldn’t be able to resist honey?

Anyone who, like me, grew up in the 1980s knows a close relative of this idea: the “homewrecker,” a word aimed at the other woman and never at the husband who cheated. One of the decade’s most successful films, Fatal Attraction (1987), tells the story of a married man (Michael Douglas) whose affair turns into a nightmare when the woman (Glenn Close) refuses to stay discreet and starts asking for more. The film portrays the mistress as mentally unstable and dangerous. The film ends with the wife killing the mistress and family values restored. The husband’s betrayal is never really an issue.

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