IF women weren’t supposed to be so nice all the time – especially to each other – maybe we would all be a lot less fascinated by the so-called "cat fights" between them. Last week, following the sudden death of her brother, actress Kim Cattrall of Sex In The City (SITC) told her former series co-star, Sarah Jessica Parker (SJP) to shove her condolences where the sun doesn’t shine. “Your continuous reaching out is a painful reminder of how cruel you really were then and now," she said on Instagram. "I don’t need your love or support at this tragic time.”

In fairness to Cattrall, grief and loss can really shake us and is a catalyst for all kinds of powerful feelings, including helplessness and rage.

Her reported feelings of exclusion by her three co-stars in the iconic TV series, could have made Cattrall feel vulnerable at times (even if she may have played her own part to play in creating any hostile dynamic). Why then, are we so surprised that her helplessness in the face of the death of her brother, Chris, unleashed genuine feelings of anger and resentment? Death creates a stage set for all of us to act out such feelings. Celebrity and a $1m per episode pay packet are no inoculation against mortality or the feelings it invokes in us.

Cattrall’s justification for her visceral and public rejection of Parker’s sympathy appears rudimentary: SJP never seemed to cared about her before her brother died, so why would she want to start now? Cattrall appears to suggest that SJP’s show of sympathy is a cynical and manipulative act whose sole purpose was to re-instate her nice-girl image in the media. SJP’s response has been more restrained than Cattrall’s outburst on Instagram, saying she’s been hurt by Cattrall’s refusal to accept her condolences and playing down the notion that the two of them have been arch rivals for at least a decade.

Men argue every day but we don’t put the same kind of kinky, mud-wrestling spin on it. When men fight over things like pay and production rights, they’re just doing that Darwinian thing. When women do it, it is laughed off as a cat fight, littering our media with spicy headlines about alleged diva-ish tendencies.

It’s too facile to smirk at the irony of this latest real-life episode, given the whole premise of SITC: best female friends will always be there for you, loyal to the end, no matter what (unlike all those supposedly feckless Mr Bigs, prowling the bars of New York City). The fact is that the version of sisterhood and friendship peddled in Sex In The City was so sanitised and sentimentalised, it had no bearing on the reality or complexity of the personal relationships between women. If anything, it pandered to the male stereotype of female friendship, a bond borne of shopping, high heels, cappuccinos, the sought-after but mythical multiple and unbridled orgasm and, above all else, moaning and pining about their relationships with men.

The term "cat-fight" encapsulates all of these misconceptions, thereby reducing conflict within female friendships to the realm of daytime TV showdowns where they battle it out – quite literally – under the eager eyes of patriarchal referees such as Jerry Springer and Jeremy Kyle. Karl Marx would have described the "exhibits" on these shows as suffering from "false consciousness", the state of not knowing who the real enemy is, in which victims turn on one another. It’s no laughing matter, more an indictment of the kind of voyeuristic world we live in where gloating over the raw material of other folks’ feelings passes for entertainment.

Our astonishment at Cattrall’s caustic response to SJP’s condolences, is disingenuous. All of us, regardless of our gender and given a certain configuration of bad experiences and difficult life events, are capable of blasting out at others in moments of anger, insecurity and loss. The important thing is to be able to forgive and accept the flaws in ourselves and others and to build something deeper and more resilient out of conflict.

As long as women collude with the fantasy that they are devoid of dark and angry feelings and continue to conform to the confected version of being "nice", the longer it will take for us to achieve equality – not only with men, but with one another.