My dilemma and my challenge: how to compete with other women and still be a feminist

An elderly female friend once told Arabella Weir that no woman could ever criticise another woman, because it always, always looked like sour grapes

Standing in engenders the very worst in Arabella (Ping Zhu)

So, as you'll see, here I am standing in for Grace Dent. Standing in. Not taking over. Oh no, I'm not doing anything as gladiatorial or full of brio as taking over. Grubby as it may sound, I confess that this would make me feel powerful, confident and all ooh, get me-ish, while obviously expressing sympathy for Grace, finessed with a disingenuous tilt of the head, but only once I'd stolen her job.

At the same time, standing in engenders the very worst in me. Suddenly I'm hostage to a wildly out-of-control pendulum swinging between a rock-solid conviction of my unworthiness, as proven by not being offered the job in the first place, and a demented, cackling, maniacal belief in my unique ability to do better than anyone else. And there, in a nutshell, you have the pointlessly introspective workings of the mind of a freelancer in the creative world, where meritocracy is an entirely subjective and ungraspable quality.

Most writers, performers or, like me, those who do both, have spent aeons of empty hours reading the paper, a book or watching the TV while gnashing their teeth, frothing at the mouth, and muttering "Her?! She's shit! Everyone knows that! Why isn't it me?!" If not monitored carefully, this activity can turn into an entire career in itself.

The trick is to learn to harness and then redeploy this raging competitiveness, which can then serve one well, fuelling productivity and the much-needed energy required to keep going when things are a bit grim. My real dilemma, however, specifically raised on the occasion of standing in for Grace, is how to handle and then place feeling competitive alongside feminism. I'm more than happy to slag off any talentless male peer. Hey, given half a chance I'll give the talented ones a good kicking too. But how does one manage appropriate sisterly support in tandem with an arguably healthy sense of competition? For starters, can one even admit to it?

An elderly female friend, long since dead, once told me that no woman could ever criticise another woman, least of all one in the same field of work, because it always, always looked like sour grapes. That said, she agreed with my retort that when men criticise other men, doing so tends to be regarded as more like reasonable, professional appraisal rather than the bitterness and envy attributed to us women when we do the same thing.

Is it perhaps because there still abounds the myth (well, I hope it's a myth now) that women are, at base, competing with each other for men to impregnate them? Or is it because having endured centuries of male domination we just aren't yet relaxed enough in the driver's seat to let a perhaps less good driver overtake?

On a day when I'm feeling robust and fairly at peace with my lot, I'll feel able to celebrate a potential rival's achievements. But on a less good day, I can be thrown into the deepest of relentlessly deep sloughs by that same person's good news, wallowing in the conviction that their up heralds my down. I oscillate between thinking I'm cock-of-the-walk and thinking everyone is more entitled than I am. But that's very probably my upbringing because, you see, my mother was a woman. Most people's are. And as long as a woman is your mother, or your mother is a woman, and you, as another woman, feel (as you should according to psychotherapists) a sense of competition towards her at some point in your life, then feeling competitive towards any woman is going to be super-complicated.

To make matters worse, historically, "nice" girls weren't competitive, least of all with each other, and certainly not with a man. Historically, girls weren't even supposed to have jobs, let alone careers. Just think of the words used for women who not only have careers but might even give them precedence: bitch, bossy and, the most loaded of all – ambitious. Attached to a bloke, "ambitious" is usually a compliment, but rarely so for women.

I've got a daughter. Naturally I want her to do well, to know who she is and what she wants, and to pursue those aims, but not at the cost of others, and be a supporter of women and never to have a go at another woman if she gets off with her boyfriend. That is entry-level feminism in action. Why berate her? She's not your partner. It's your partner who behaved like a twat. Give him what-for.

Fortunately, unlike my own mother, I don't feel competitive towards my daughter, but then again my mother's struggle against the chains of domesticity and family life, while trying to find an outlet for her considerable brain, was much greater than mine. In the mid-1960s she had to have written permission from my father, her estranged husband, to take up a teaching job. Hilarious but true.

So, OK, I am competitive. And I am a feminist. Maybe that's what it feels like to be a bloke these days.

@ArabellaWeir