Biography
Matt Nadel (he/him/his) is a queer filmmaker and journalist from Florida. His films focus primarily on issues of criminal and social justice. Matt's work has been showcased by the New York Times Op-Docs and by several international film festivals, including the Rhode Island International Film Festival, Greenwich International Film Festival, New Haven International Film Festival, and Mystic Film Festival. His most recent documentary, 120 YEARS (120yearsfilm.com), won Best Medium-Length Doc at the Montreal International Black Film Festival and Best Short Doc at the Pan African Film Festival, the largest black film festival in the U.S. Matt began his work on CANS CAN’T STAND while serving as a Documentary Fellow at the New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC) in New Orleans.
Megan Plotka (she/her/hers) is an activist and journalist who works in television, print, and documentary film. Before beginning her storytelling career, Megan spent several years undertaking social justice organizing work at nonprofits in New Orleans, including the Louisiana Prison Education Coalition, Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), and Orleans Public Defenders. As a journalist, Megan wrote for New Orleans’ Uptown Messenger, The Borgen Project, and 256 Magazine before becoming an associate producer at WDSU News.
Megan made the leap from journalism to documentary through a yearlong social justice service corps fellowship at the New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC). At NOVAC, she worked on projects covering money bail, voting rights restoration for people with felony convictions, and the public defender crisis in Louisiana.
A graduate of Tulane University, Megan hails from Huntsville, Alabama and is proud to tell stories that reflect the complexity, beauty, and nuance of the South.
Matt and Megan would like to thank Wendi Cooper, Darcy McKinnon, Gigi Glenn, Syrita Steib-Martin, and Dr. Joseph Fischel for their continued support.
Research
In Louisiana, sex work has been a crime since the early nineteenth century. But in 1982, the state legislature invented a new prostitution law.
The law, called Crime Against Nature by Solicitation (CANS), sprung from right-wing paranoia around “male hustlers”—gay teens working the French Quarter as prostitutes and evading police apprehension. Although this crisis was largely fictionalized, its byproduct, CANS, had real impacts: although prostitution and CANS covered identical conduct, CANS, a law specifically targeting the LGBT community, was a felony, punishable by up to five years of hard labor.
As overt antigay animus faded from the mainstream, CANS did not fade with it. Rather, CANS has been reinvoked by generations of officials carrying out distinct projects of discrimination, including the state’s Clinton-era crime craze and N.O.P.D.’s infamous post-Katrina “street cleaning” scheme.
Most shockingly, since the beginning, police have used their discretion under CANS to unjustly arrest, incarcerate, and abuse hundreds of transgender women of color. Today, transgender activists like Wendi Cooper, the protagonist of CANS CAN’T STAND, are leading the fight to repeal this anti-LGBT law. CANS CAN’T STAND follows their efforts—and traces the history preceding them.
