Female In-group Bias, or the Mistaken Presumption of Loyalty from a Female Friend

I'm sitting inside of a pub in South Korea having a few liters of beer with my Irish friend when this Canadian chick walks in and starts swinging. I'm a skinny vegan and she's this beer-chugging-fried-chicken-wings-eating chick that's built like a hockey player, so the blows I was blocking weren't sissy rubs. After her Mexican friend pulls her away, I notice my ex and my roommate behind the hockey player.

I'm shocked, so I ask what's going, and the hockey player shouts: "I don't like how you use women for sex!" I reply, "please, Hockey Player, this doesn't concern you," but she goes over to my roommate, hugs her, and shouts, "I love this girl!" 

Hockey Player was drunk as hell, stumbling over and preventing me from talking to my roommate and ex. After a couple of minutes of getting interrupted, I finally asked the hockey player if I used women for sex: "Yes you do, you scumbag!"

I pointed at my ex, asked the same question, and she nodded yes. I pointed at another girl that was there and whom I had also previously hooked up with, and she nodded yes. I pointed at my roommate and also asked her if I used women for sex. She replied: "I had to do all the work looking for the apartment, and I'm the one who always has to go pay the rent."

I was a few beers into that Monday morning, so I couldn't process a response to what my roommate had said. She didn't cook one single time in the three months we'd lived together (leaving me to do all the work,) and I never complained the couple of times she'd left her vomit in the bathroom before going off to work. Hell, I even cleaned it up. I wanted to tell her: "You deposit the money in the ATM, that's one trip for you, but I have to go to the ATM to withdraw the money myself, so we each make one trip. Even if you gave me the money to deposit, you would still have to make one trip beforehand. As for the apartment? You asked me if I wanted to move in with you, and I told you that I would just go with whatever place you chose."

At the time I couldn't formulate that response, so I just walked back to my table, next to my Irish friend, and he says in regards to Hockey Player: "What a cunt!"

The incident was jarring, to say the least. As a brown guy from the 'hood who was smart enough to figure out the racial dynamics of America, play the game and graduate Yale, I knew that I had to run for the hills; four white women were getting together talking about what an evil slut I was. Never mind that Hockey Player had been with more guys than I had women, or that my roommate was playing a guy in the army, or that my ex was fucking as many guys as I was women in our "open relationship," I was the evil slut because my ex was heartbroken at the fact that I was sleeping with a girl who was an enemy of the group. I had committed treason by sleeping with the enemy.

For the next couple of weeks, I didn't acknowledge the group. At first I tried having one-on-one conversations with people in the group, but Hockey Player was not content with me just removing myself from the group, she saw it necessary to come up to people I was talking to and interrupt my conversation, asking the other person to join her for some contrived reason. I would be talking to a person, and then she would drag them over to her table, where my roommate and ex also were always drinking -- being an expat in Korea is the same as living in a small town.

So I ran for the hills, I pretended like the group didn't exist, simply nodded hello at whoever I was still on good terms with and kept walking in another direction. On the street, I would change sidewalks whenever I saw Hockey Player walking in my direction. 

I honestly don't know what Hockey Player wanted to accomplish, but I no longer felt comfortable around her clique. Why would I want to willingly join a group of women who had caused drama in my life and gossiped about me? After a few weeks of "no José in-sight," it became pretty clear that I had absolutely no difficulty in completely eliminating a group of people from my life. In my eyes, I had done the most prudent thing possible, but in their eyes I had only proved that I was an asshole for unfriending everybody.

About a month into me ignoring everyone, I'm drinking and my ex comes up to me. At first I try to ignore her, but then she starts shaking my arm. "What do you want to talk about?" I finally acquiesce. "Us," she says. "There is no us," I tell her as I turn my face away. She pulled my arm again and became visibly distressed. I was still too angry to talk and also it was Sunday morning and we were all a few too many drinks into the game. Not only that, all her "girlfriends" were in the same bar and I knew she was just going to talk about whatever we discussed, knowing that her girlfriends would all side with her.

Fortunately all this happened three months before I was to leave Korea, but nonetheless I had to bump into them in almost every place I went to in Itaewon or Haebangchon. In a way it was a good thing because I went searching for old friends, started making new friends, and also explored beyond Korea's bars in those three months more than I had in two years.

But then it came down to my last night, and my ex once again wanted to talk. We're sitting in the bar, having a productive conversation, when Hockey Player shows up again. Hockey Player grabs my ex by the hand and tells her: "Let's go, he doesn't want to talk to you!" I ignored the hockey player, and my ex just tells her: "But it's his last day!" Hockey Player says, "let's go" one more time and my ex starts crying and they both walk out of the bar together; that was the last time I saw either of them.