Last Thursday, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington responded to a question posed to two other executives about whether the HuffPo or the Wall Street Journal would be bigger in five years.

She said, “You guys are all about who has the biggest swinging dick.”

From VentureBeat:

Huffington said that’s a dumb, very male way to look at the world, when in fact both the Journal and the HuffPo can flourish, and a bunch of new publications can take off too.

Huffington also rejected the idea that the HuffPo is in a rivalry with Tina Brown’s site The Daily Beast, especially now that The Daily Beast has merged with Newsweek. Whenever two women are involved, people assume “there must have been a catfight somewhere,” Huffington said, but she isn’t thinking about any rivalry, because her company is doing just fine.

Huffington added, “That’s an old-fashioned guy game…We women just need to resist participating in it.”

The question about which media company will be more profitable in five years is a bad one. The respondents were executives, not fortune-tellers. Huffington is also right in that there’s room for multiple profit-making organizations in media. There can be more than one winner. The catfight statement is also true. Countless reality TV shows are based on getting women together and then turning them against each other.

But is there anything wrong with competition? Competition can keep products and services fresh, new and appealing to consumers. For individuals, it can be used a motivator to achieve their goals on the playing field or in life. It’s when a person or company becomes obsessed with their competitors that problems develop. Focus is lost on the job or life in front of them and turns to their competitor’s “swinging dick.”

It’s about balance.

Do you think men generally focus too much on who is the best or the biggest? What are examples of how men and women compete differently? Is one way better than the other?

Leave your comments below.