No Woman, No Revolution, Part 5a
Wal Hannington
To be Ungendered
The title of the attached
document, taken from a 1950 book by Wal Hannington on organisation, is a
first-class example of the genderisation of a topic by careless or unconscious
use of language.
“Mr Chairman” would seem to
be a male. Of course, there is nothing in the book that explicitly states that
a Chairperson has to be male.
Game, set and match! Wal
Hannington can be found posthumously guilty in the court of Gender, and all his
works can be condemned, along with those of countless other writers, especially
in the English language, which is, or has in the past been “gendered” in a way
that is quite resilient and difficult to avoid. Avoiding “gendered” references
of this kind in English takes a will, and constant effort.
But it would be a mistake to
throw out Wal Hannington’s work, because in practice it is quite essentially
“gender-sensitive”. The book is dedicated to making it possible for anyone to
attend meetings without feeling left out, put down, or patronised. It strongly
opposes the use of the chair in a patronising way towards the members of the
meeting.
The book provides the weapons
by which the ordinary members of a meeting are able to intervene and assert
themselves in all necessary ways, so as to guide the chairperson, as much as to
be guided by the chairperson.
The Chairperson is the main
servant of the meeting, and not the boss of the meeting, says Hannington.
One of the common complaints
of feminists who would flee from structure, is that formal meetings are
oppressive. They can be, but the remedy is not structurelessness. The remedy is
to see how the structure can work, and is well designed to work, in a way that
promotes fairness and democracy.
What is oppressive about
meetings arises from ignorance of the procedure and of the rules of debate. Wal
Hannington (who was a major communist leader in his lifetime) made time to
create this work so as to help do away with oppressive and submissive behaviour
during meetings.
The attached document is a
redaction of the most crucial parts of Hannington’s book, as they relate to the
most common types of meetings such as Branch meetings of mass democratic
organisations.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Rules of
Debate and Procedure of Meetings, Hannington, 1950.
