Vassal… La Vassal

Dear Insane Minds,

On numerous occasions I receive enlightened criticism and corrections to this tacky way of calling me, offended but undoubtedly well-intentioned people who wish to instruct me on my own way of naming myself and addressing the world. “What is this” Vassal “thing, for God’s sake ?!” “Anyone knows that in Castilian surnames do not have an article, imbecile!”, “You look like a waitress naming you like that”, “No one will ever take you seriously” and etc …

Notice before explaining that this use of the surname with the article before I do not use it only for myself, but for all the authors that I cite in my works. And I’m not just going to tell you why, but I’m going to encourage you to do it too, as a daily guerrilla, of resistance against invisibility.

Let me tell you. When someone quotes me in an article or introduces me to an event, they usually start with the full name “Brigitte Vasallo.” But once this is done, the second time I am named, it is done with my first name. “Brigitte.” And so it stays until the end.

Not that I am bothered by the familiarity or the closeness, quite the contrary. Nor does my ego offend me: I don’t think I deserve more importance. What bothers me is the certainty that if I were called José or Xavier, no one would quote me in articles with my first name. It would be Vassal. As Vasallo says, colon, quotation marks.

Thus, the use of the Christian name is not marked by the smallness of my work, but the smallness of my gender. To be a woman. Little woman.

Pérez-Reverte is never called Arturo

Women, no matter how much we are, we are close, we do personal, anecdotal things, and you can just trust us. Authors do universal and neutral things; not male, but human.

Shakespeare is never William, Cervantes is never Miguel. But Davis is often Angela, and Woolf becomes Virginia. This is a way, unconscious without a doubt, to return to our work, to reduce ourselves to the family environment, to continue to mark the limit between the true thought and the concrete, anecdotal thought that we represent.

This column could end here. Give us the surname also and the matter concluded. But little women, you know, we are never quite happy. If we are quoted only with the surname, we lose our gender, we are taken for men.

And the difficulties that we assume to create, to think, to write, to investigate, to invent are much greater than those that a man has to face. Of course there are many other issues to consider.

It is not the same to be upper class than working class, it is not the same to be a national than to be a migrant, it is not the same to have normative capacities as different capacities, it is not the same to be a paya than to be a gypsy.

Some people are much more stimulated to pursue some subjects than others. We have few references of gypsy artists, and that influences the expectation of being one. We have few black actresses, we have few writers with functional diversity, we have few conspicuously lesbian singers. We lack all that.

And because we are lacking, at the gender level, it is important to make it visible.

I am a woman and I write. I am a writer. I exist And, even as a small writer, I am better than many Perez Revertes. But I am Brigitte and they will never be Arthur.

The solution to this puzzle? Honor our innkeeper mothers, who also had no right to be, our bastard mothers, fierce, indomitable.

Let’s keep the last name and add the article. Let’s force the language, let’s show that we don’t mind being grammatically incorrect, because our simple existence is already incorrect. Let us mention the Butler, the Federici, the Garcés, the Anzaldúa, the Wadud.

The innkeepers were always bad women, drinkers, prostitutes, brothel owners. What society calls “good women” are women who do not cause problems, those who keep quiet, those who make themselves small. Filling our articles, our speeches, and our thinking of bad women can only be good news.