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JQuinton comments on Open Thread, May 12 - 18, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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If it were me, I would just assume she was lightheartedly teasing. If that's the case, the course of action would be to tease back, but also in a lighthearted way. Either that, or reply with an extremely exaggerated form of self-deprecation; agree with her teasing but in a way that exaggerates the original intent. Even if that's not the case, and she's being vindictive, I think responding as though she were teasing would be ideal anyway.
Examples:
"I tripped and almost fell on you. Oh but you would be happy if I accidentally fell on you, right?" (tease back): "Clumsy people don't really do it for me" (exaggerate): "That's because I have never had a woman touch me before in my life"
"Oh no, you're going to need a triple X size." (tease back): "I think you just like saying 'triple X'. Get your mind out of the gutter, thanks" (exaggerate): "I'm going to cry myself to sleep over my size tonight "
If she laughs and/or plays along with these responses, she's probably just teasing. If she gets even more cruel in her response, then she's probably being intentionally vindictive.
I'll implement the 'tease back' strategy, plus I will also mention that I've noticed that she's treating me worse than usual lately.
This way I'll gather intel both from her emotional and logical reactions, and will try to make up a single model of the situation.
I am far from an expert in these matters, but would advise against both teasing back and saying explicitly that you interpret the teasing as "treating me worse than usual".
[EDITED to add: To be clear, I mean "don't do both of these together" rather than "both of these are individually bad ideas".]
Why not both? What could go especially wrong?
Because one is playful and the other feels hostile. Doing both at once won't give you a clear sense of what her response is to either. Do them in separate encounters.
Why is teasing back a bad idea?
Apparently even with my edit I wasn't clear enough. Letting A be "tease back" and B be "mention that she seems to be treating you worse recently", I wasn't saying
but was saying
If you ask her a direct question, I would take into account that this would more than likely engage her press secretary and might not get the logical answer you are looking for.
Yeah, I explained myself poorly. By 'logical' I meant the 'rationalized' explanation.
It should at least tell me if she's aware of the behaviour or not.
Really? Because if someone told me I wasn't treating them well, I would apologize and make nice regardless of whether I'd been doing it intentionally. I think you are overestimating how well confronting her will work to inform you.
Think about (ahead of time) what response(s) you'd expect if it were all a misunderstanding and what response(s) you'd expect if it were deliberate. If there's a lot of plausible overlap between the two worlds, you won't learn very much, but you may make the whole thing more awkward by drawing attention to it.
I think you're right: telling her is not especially informative, plus would surely modify her model of me and muddle the waters even more (I forgot to apply the principle that you disturb everything you measure).
I think I'll just tease her back and resort to telling her if and only if this escalates in a bad direction.