“ The term comes from spy fiction: dictionaries credit John le Carré with popularizing “honey trap” in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in 1974.

Espionage has long been a man’s world, and in its novels a female spy is very often a seductress.

Real Cold War espionage looked quite different, since East Germany’s best-known seduction program used men, so-called ‘Romeo’ agents sent west to seduce secretaries with access to government files.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91640992/can-we-please-stop-calling-it-a-honey-trap