How about avoiding labels completely, and asking directly about behavior? Let’s make gender-neutral or gender-reversed questions for men and women, taboo all jargon, and see how many of them will report using the given strategy.
For example: “Do you sometimes pretend to be unavailable, even if you have free time, just to make yourself more scarce?” Or: “If the person you are dating becomes too proud of themselves, do you slightly criticize them in order to bring them back to earth?”
A woman can learn gender-reversed versions of some PUA advice from a magazine or hear it from her friends; she does not have to identify with any label. And she does not have to read any specific book, because all the information is already out there. Advice for women about manipulating men is generally not shocking and controversial. “The Rules” is a book that strongly pattern-matches PUA advice (a name similar to “The Game”, simplistic bullet-point advice), which was probably intentional, to create controversy and increase sales… but it’s not like women never read the specific ideas before in other books and magazines. (Okay, this one is probably new: “Don’t Discuss The Rules with Your Therapist”.)
How about avoiding labels completely, and asking directly about behavior? Let’s make gender-neutral or gender-reversed questions for men and women, taboo all jargon, and see how many of them will report using the given strategy.
For example: “Do you sometimes pretend to be unavailable, even if you have free time, just to make yourself more scarce?” Or: “If the person you are dating becomes too proud of themselves, do you slightly criticize them in order to bring them back to earth?”
A woman can learn gender-reversed versions of some PUA advice from a magazine or hear it from her friends; she does not have to identify with any label. And she does not have to read any specific book, because all the information is already out there. Advice for women about manipulating men is generally not shocking and controversial. “The Rules” is a book that strongly pattern-matches PUA advice (a name similar to “The Game”, simplistic bullet-point advice), which was probably intentional, to create controversy and increase sales… but it’s not like women never read the specific ideas before in other books and magazines. (Okay, this one is probably new: “Don’t Discuss The Rules with Your Therapist”.)