Autonomedia and Big Red Media announce the

2002 "Sheroes & Womyn Warriors" Wall Calendar

which is now available for purchase on-line at 2002 Sheroes Calendar.

Here is an explanation of this calendar project:

This is a corrective "history" project. It is part of a Herstory coming into being. We recognize, celebrate and honor "womyn" (spelled like this to take the Man out) of the past (as well as a few who still live today but are in their twilight years) who have been rebels and fighters against patriarchy, who opposed and fought invaders and aggressors to their homelands, and who represent radicals and revolutionaries of their times and societies, who if they were alive today, would continue to serve as sheroic examples. We've also included a few celestial and supernatural females important to a womyn-centeredness.
This is definitely not a "great women of History" celebrity calendar. We do not honor or celebrate conquerors, acquisitive capitalists, establishment feminists, repressive politicians, self-aggrandizing and opportunist writers, artists and intellectualsÑregardless of their gender.

Rather, this is a "great womyn of Herstory" people's calendar of womyn who have challenged their societies and have advanced the struggle of the oppressed and exploited. For being sheroes, many of these womyn have not been celebrated by the patriarchal or Eurocentric, bourgeois establishment. Indeed for their defiance and independence, many have been denounced, attacked, imprisoned, even executed and assassinated. And History has maligned, distorted, obscured and disappeared many as well. Some, however, through strength of their accomplishments, leadership and victories are memorialized and honored.

You may not agree with all of our choices. We ourselves had some problematic selections (e.g., womyn "queens" even of pre-capitalist, pre-nation-state societies), but since human beings are contradictory creatures, we evaluated them based on their overall role and impact (e.g., did they fight against a larger colonizing threat or defy the dominant patriarchy?). But by and large, most of the womyn contained herein represent the oppressed and exploited masses.

We have endeavored to be internationalist and multicultural. There probably doesn't exist another calendar or popular historical project that has the diversity of cultures, societies and historical periods reflected here. However, we do acknowledge our limitations for being North Americans (though a multicultural/multinational group and certainly not majority-white) without many resources or access to information in languages that aren't English and welcome submissions, especially from western Asia (the so-called Middle East), north Africa, southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, South America (especially indigenous womyn). There's a form in back for you to make submissions.

What you'll find here is the reality that womyn have not been marginal to the class struggle (i.e., class struggle as the totality of "history" incorporating the struggle for class, gender, national/"racial" liberation), but that History (ruling class and patriarchal) has marginalized womyn. Even in so-called "male" activities as warfare and governing, the womyn celebrated in this calendar have been innovators in martial arts and military science and cooperative, collectivist and democratic forms of government and social organization.

For every day of the year, there's a womyn or womyn's action that we've selected to honor and uphold. We wanted to combine personal background with the historical significance of these individual womyn and actions. Where exact dates could be found, we've capitalized them as they relate to the calendar date. We've included some spicy quotes, too. The length of our presentations for each date/individual is somewhat arbitrary, but we wanted to give more attention to those womyn/actions whom we felt were more interesting examples, not necessarily the most famous (in which case more information is available from many other sources). In some cases because of antiquity or insufficient historiography, or our lack of resources, visual representations or precise information couldn't be found so we've taken "artistic license" and given interpretations. Anything that you can supply or correct is welcome and appreciated.

Finally, the work on this calendar has been monumental, trying to identify 365 womyn warriors and sheroes from a diversity of cultures, societies and roles with emphasis upon the "unrecognized" and "invisible." Much thanks should be extended to all of the contributors (researchers and illustrators) as well as to our publisher for supporting this project.