The Scarlet Letter | Season 3 | Episode 3 | Mary Pirozek
What started as a few portraits at McGill University turned into a nationwide movement in Canada and now, thanks to Monash Law student Mary Pirozek, it’s making waves at Monash. This episode dives into how the Law Needs Feminism Because campaign is giving students and legal professionals a platform to share personal, powerful truths. The campaign features law students, staff, and their unapologetic reasons for believing the law needs feminism. Host Dr Tamara Wilkinson and Mary unpack what it means to be radical and accessible, and why feminism in the law isn’t just necessary, it’s transformative.
First published 2017.
The Scarlet Letter podcast is produced by the Feminist Legal Studies Group. This podcast features interviews with feminists connected to the law, discussing their life, work, and feminist perspectives. It's perfect for anyone passionate about feminist legal scholarship.
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Transcript | The Scarlet Letter | Season 3 | Episode 3 | Mary Pirozek
Tamara Wilkinson: [00:00:00] Good morning, I'm Tamara Wilkinson, and welcome to this episode of The Scarlet Letter, the monthly podcast of the Feminist Legal Studies Group at Monash University's Faculty of Law. Today, I'm joined by one of our current law students, Mary Pirozek, who's one of the coordinators of Monash's new Law Needs Feminism Because movement.
So Mary is currently involved in curating an exhibition of photos of current and former law students and staff, which will be displayed alongside the reasons that they individually believe that feminism is necessary to the law. Mary, thank you so much for joining me to talk about Law Needs Feminism. As I'm very passionate about this project.
I think it's amazing what you're doing.
Mary Pirozek: Thank you so much for having me. I'm pretty passionate as well.
Tamara Wilkinson: I know you are. I appreciate it. [00:01:00] I just am in awe of how much effort and excitement you've put into this project. I think it's so cool.
Mary Pirozek: Oh, we all have. We've got a pretty fantastic little committee going and everyone is putting so much love and excitement in it.
Now we're just in the waiting phase. That means We've got all this energy bubbled up with nowhere to go until we can release our campaign.
Tamara Wilkinson: My understanding of the Law Needs Feminism movement is that it started in Canada at universities a few years ago. Can you tell me a little bit about the origins of the movement and when you first heard about it?
Mary Pirozek: So in 2016 there was this feminist collective of the McGill University Law Faculty, and they organized this very simple campaign, they just asked themselves, why do you think law needs feminism? And they organized this brilliant little photo campaign with only 33 portraits, where they took a photo of someone looking casual, looking as they were in their day to day life, and in their [00:02:00] own handwriting, superimposed above their head, is the reason why they thought law needed feminism.
It included just the diversity of reasons that were all so personal to the people involved was really simple, but really powerful. Because it did have that touch of personality. It did have that touch of ordinary people doing extraordinary things and wanting to make this better world. Yeah. And since then, Canada has managed to turn this into an over a thousand person national executive that coordinates a full Law Needs Feminism Because campaign.
They run things like national forums with really prominent speakers from politicians to prominent people in the law and academics, and can organize further campaigns and it's spread across lots of universities across Canada. And. We're the first to have it here. Trailblazer. I've checked out the the Law Needs Feminism because Instagram, the Canadian one, [00:03:00] it's got a bunch of the portraits on it.
Tamara Wilkinson: It's really, I've spent probably like maybe an hour scrolling through it when I was trying to think up the quote to put above my portrait.
Mary Pirozek: For people who are listening people usually had quite short quotes. Tamara had virtually an essay that we had to go look. We're not going to be able to fit all of that unless we somehow manage to have a Star Wars scrolling text, which isn't so possible in print form.
Tamara Wilkinson: I did cut it down though. Eventually. And then I had to rewrite it three times because I somehow managed to spell religion wrong three times.
Mary Pirozek: But I think everyone has a lot of reasons. And one of the things about this campaign is it allows everyone to dig deep and think, okay, what is my purpose? Personal reason.
Yeah. What do I think about this? And because we have such a diversity of people involved Students from all the year levels and staff We have people [00:04:00] who are already out and prominent within the legal field. We end up with this diversity of opinions as well
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah,
Mary Pirozek: all of which was for a common goal of having Feminism within the law.
Tamara Wilkinson: And did you manage to get at least a couple of men involved in the end?
Mary Pirozek: We did indeed. There are a lot of men who definitely feel that they are allies to feminism and notably that the men we got involved were those who tended to be more established already. So we had already. I'm not going to spoil who's in the campaign, but who are already prominent within the law, whereas I think students, male students often feel like they, it's harder to become an ally to feminism.
They often, high school doesn't teach you anything about feminism. And I think the way a university degree is structured often means you don't get exposure. So I think it's harder for them to be able to get involved, but hopefully with this campaign, with it's. focus on this social awareness and seeing men getting involved [00:05:00] can feel like they can have reasons to and we're going to have a more liberated world as well.
Tamara Wilkinson: When we, when you get to round two of the Australian Law Needs Feminism, we'll have more men.
Mary Pirozek: We're already starting to plan for round two. There has been a huge demand to do this again. It's just a matter of securing a bit of
Tamara Wilkinson: funding. Yeah. Fantastic. That's so good to hear. So how did you personally become involved in launching the movement at Monash?
Mary Pirozek: I was the women's officer on the Law Student Society last year, and Becky Batagol, who is staff here and probably listening, very prominent in the Feminist Legal Studies group, contacted me after she'd been in Canada, saying, I've seen this amazing campaign. Is this something that the LSS could possibly do?
Now, at that stage, it was quite difficult to organize it. Things like complications with sponsors and just simply the amount of time it would take to get people on board and go through a lot of the red tape issues meant that we couldn't [00:06:00] do it while I was a part of the LSS. So I started organizing it in my free time and we secured a small committee, including the current LSS women's officer who's been helping out as well.
And I'm really grateful and appreciative that Becky saw this opportunity, recognized how important it was, and especially in bringing it to a Victorian and Australian context. Yeah. A really particularly pertinent time given a lot of the recent royal commissions Yeah. Into family violence and further ongoing.
Commission's and inquiries into sexual assault on campus and things like that.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and then like of course against like the broader backdrop of me too and it's not like specific to a legal context, but it's still, having an effect on public opinion.
Mary Pirozek: Absolutely. I think it's actually notable that The Me Too movement didn't seem as prominent within Australia as it did in other places in the world.
Yeah. [00:07:00] And I think there is still a culture in Australia of not speaking out about issues. I think there is a culture of not wanting to seem too feminist or seeming too radical. Yeah. We're a very, all right, let's just be fair here, a society, which is good in terms of giving people a fair go and all of that.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah.
Mary Pirozek: But can make it harder for victims to be able to speak out in a lot
Tamara Wilkinson: of cases. Yeah, for sure. So one of my first thoughts on hearing about the project, aside from that it's amazing and I love it was it's quite ambitious and it's quite I don't know if confronting is the right word, but in the sense that you're going to have, these pictures of people's faces with these very personal comments and they're going to be displayed in the law faculty.
It's going to be very prominent. It's gonna be very visible. Did you have that sense at all when you launched the project or not really?
Mary Pirozek: It was quite scary because obviously the more personal you make your quote, the more vulnerable you are because these [00:08:00] will be on the internet forever. Anything that is on the internet will be there forever, but also hanging up.
But then I thought about the fact that we have so many portraits of men, and looking at the orientation of law as a men's world, that I thought that could overcome the confronting nature of it. And notably, everyone who's involved is a volunteer, someone who put their hand up, someone who actually applied for this.
We had to turn people away because we just didn't have the capacity to take everyone. Yeah. They knew what that this would be up, they would become almost the face of Monash feminism. Yeah. Which I love that. A little bit of
Tamara Wilkinson: informed consent goes a long way. Yeah. I know when I wrote out my first, no, sorry, my second iteration of my quote, I read it to my family and they were like, no, you can't put that up in your workplace.
So then I had to, redo it a little bit, make it [00:09:00] a bit more acceptable, but yeah. It's okay. We got there in the end.
Mary Pirozek: I think because we have so many people at different stages of their careers and things, it actually meant that while some people definitely had to almost tone police themselves and have this sort of air of respectability, because we have this diversity of people with different amounts of privilege, I think as a whole, it still makes quite a radical and impactful message, which is a good thing.
And I think something that was a little bit scary is It's trying to find that right balance between it being quite radical and confronting, but also being accessible to everyone. Because when things are confronting, it's often not just confronting to overarching power structures, but can be confronting for the very people that you want to have on board.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And in a way. It's the role of a university to foster discussion and to foster, different [00:10:00] opinions and to put things out there and to, spread different ideologies and yeah it's a good fit.
Mary Pirozek: It's quite important in learning that feminism isn't a dirty word.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Which is not, as we know, cause it's in the title of our group. So your exhibition hasn't launched yet, but you have put up a Facebook page for Law Needs Feminism because, and I encourage our listeners to go and check that out. And you've also taken all the photos at this stage.
Mary Pirozek: We have taken all the photos at this stage.
In the process of. Superimposing people's handwriting above their heads, getting all of that little editing stuff worked out. We aren't actually, we're not editing people's faces. We're not, despite everyone going, Oh, I wish I looked better in that photo. We thought it's best that these are untouched, people are true to themselves.
And getting all of that sorted. Yeah, I remember having that. I think it was on the day of the photo shoot. I remember having the conversation with you [00:11:00] about, whether to wear makeup or not, I felt like I was betraying my feminist roots by putting on makeup. But at the same time, if I'm having an A3 size photo of my face in the faculty, I wanted it to look good.
Tamara Wilkinson: I don't think it's unfeminist to wear makeup.
Mary Pirozek: Of course not.
As I told Tamara at the time I had a bit of a crisis of conscience because I'd told everyone. Come as you usually are. And for me personally, whether laziness or anything else, I don't tend to wear makeup. So I went, Oh no, I haven't slept in a week.
I should probably cover it up. But I did make the decision to come without makeup if only to make that decision easier for other people. And I think that's part of it is. We wanted people to be true to themselves, and that meant making them as comfortable as they could be. It's not a bad thing to wear makeup, it's not a bad thing to maybe dress up a little bit if that's how you felt most empowered and most comfortable with having this confronting image that was going to be up hopefully forever.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. What's the reception to the [00:12:00] project been like so far? I know it's still in its earlier stages. Obviously you said people are already clamoring for a second. For a second round. So that's great.
Mary Pirozek: So the reception has been pretty fantastic. One thing that I was worried about and was when I initially posted the link to our Facebook group, Monash University Law Needs Feminism Because, into the Monash Law page, I was worried we were going to get. trolling comments of, Oh, but it doesn't, or angry reacts or things like that. And we just didn't, we got this huge outpouring of support, loads of people, including first years who hadn't even been exposed to law at the time going, how can I get involved in this? This sounds awesome. We were expecting to have only this Facebook page with, People on the executive liking it and maybe three of their friends that we forced to but we have over 300 likes not just at Monash but at other universities as well which I thought was quite exciting because [00:13:00] I would love for this to spread to other universities around Australia
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah,
Mary Pirozek: So the reception has been fantastic.
We had to turn people away in this first shoot Not because their quotes were worse or anything like that But because we needed We wanted the same amount of high flying, idealistic quotes and more gritty, on the ground statistics and quotes. And so we want to get ahead for that second shoot and hopefully expand this program, not just in social awareness, but in maybe mentoring programs, getting women into feminist legal academia, getting people into And feeling more comfortable using a feminist perspective within their legal studies.
Tamara Wilkinson: Maybe, like recruiting them for a podcast or something like that.
All good things. On a personal level, why do you believe that law needs feminism?
Mary Pirozek: Oh, there are so many reasons, [00:14:00] aren't there? The quote I ended up going with, and this isn't too much of a spoiler, hopefully reels everyone in for our launch, was because most rape is never reported, let alone convicted.
I think this is a serious problem, not just in Australia, but around the world, in which laws that do on the face of it have equality, often don't have equal. Measures handed out to them. Like we've had reforms to the definitions of consent towards a more positive consent model. But the practicality on the ground is people don't feel comfortable coming out and speaking about it.
People don't feel comfortable going to police who have to probe into their personal lives, who have to probe into often people's most vulnerable and violated moments. And knowing that when it comes down to it. People are innocent till proven guilty, and you have to get things beyond reasonable doubt, [00:15:00] which is often impossible in a he said, she said situation.
It's very difficult to prove things, especially if they could say I had a subjective belief that there was consent here. Yeah.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah, it's very tough and as you alluded to, that's not only a problem potentially in the legislation, but in all these underlying structures of the law that, can have such a big impact on people's lives.
Mary Pirozek: And that's the thing the law itself can be brilliant and perfectly drafted, but if it's not implemented in a way that is accessible to people. then it makes no difference. For instance, I work in family violence, in very serious and intense family violence situations, and people often think outside of that situation you get an intervention order, you're protected now, that the perpetrator can't come within five minutes, five meters of you, they can't contact you, how can things possibly happen?
But [00:16:00] the reality is things often do, right? And you don't have the time or the mental space or the ability and the capacity to be able to report breaches and things like that.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. One final question, which is, what do you hope that this Law Needs Feminism Because project will achieve in the faculty or in the university or in society?
Mary Pirozek: So many things.
I think the first thing to note is that this is a project. social media, primarily social awareness campaign. So first and foremost, what we want is more people when they come into the law building at Clayton or in the city, or when they come to study law for the first time to recognize that feminism as the basis for equality of the sexes and especially intersectional feminism, that law is meant to be equal and justice can't exist without that [00:17:00] fairness.
At the very least, I want people to come into their law studies actively thinking about feminism and the impacts of the law on people's actual lives. But further from that, I want this to be a way that people can feel more comfortable talking about feminism. I would like it to be. like potentially included within subjects when we look at the history of law, especially in, the foundations of law subject, the ways in which women weren't allowed to be lawyers, women weren't allowed to be barristers, women were just not referred to in legislation at all because it was unthinkable that women would be straying out of this pri these private spheres anyway.
And then from there, hopefully sparking up a community within Monash where we can get substantive change.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah I hope it achieves all of those things. Me too. Mary, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about Law [00:18:00] Needs Feminism Because. So for our listeners, you can find Law Needs Feminism Because on Facebook and Twitter.
Obviously there's the Canadian one, in this case, we're talking about the Australian one. Started at Monash. We love the Canadian one too. There are so many good reasons in there as well. Oh my goodness. They've built up such a cache, haven't they? It's fantastic. Fantastic. Yes. So Mary, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about your project and, thank you and your whole committee for the work that you're doing on this.
Thank you so much. And thank you all for listening to this episode of the Scarlet Letter. You can catch us again next month on iTunes or on our blog, which is found at feministlegalstudies. wordpress. com. And don't forget to subscribe to the Scarlet Letter to make sure you never miss an [00:19:00] episode.