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INTRODUCTION
With the recent technological advances in mobile phone applications, victims of catcalling and street harassment can instantly document their unwanted encounters.1 In the past, catcalling and similar behavior in public places went undocumented unless the victim walked the streets with a camcorder in hand.2 Currently, websites like Holla Back DC!3 and Stop Street Harassment4 inform the public about incidents of unwanted catcalling and attention in public places, and give victims a forum to discuss their experiences.5
In most of these catcalling incidents, the First Amendment shields the catcaller's behavior; however, First Amendment protections are not limitless. 6 The First Amendment does not protect certain expressions, such as fighting words.7 The fighting words doctrine removes protection from speech where the speaker uses abusive language that inflicts injury and incites an immediate breach of the peace.8 Catcalls, speech not included in the current fighting words doctrine, are verbal expressions that degrade, objectify, and subordinate women.9 Their negative effect on women merits their inclusion in this unprotected category of speech.
Generally, the fighting words doctrine denies constitutional protection to speech that "men of common intelligence" would understand as likely to provoke an "average addressee" to fight.10 Traditionally, the Supreme Court has limited the definition of fighting words to abusive insults directed face-to-face at a specific person.11 In the past half century, the Supreme Court has never upheld a fighting words conviction; however, the cases before the Court either did not involve classic fighting words or involved overly broad statutes.12
Historically, fighting words statutes prevented "macho" men in the late 19th century from "proving" their masculinity through violent physical acts, such as duels.13 Unlike 19th-century male combatants, most women do not respond violently to verbal abuse, leaving verbal conduct, like catcalls, excluded by the doctrine.14 This Note proposes an expansion of the fighting words doctrine to broaden the definition of the "average addressee" and considers how addressees may react differently to abusive insults and epithets in these modern times.15 Challenging the fighting words doctrine and addressing catcalling as a gender-specific injury will harmonize the First Amendment with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.16
Part I of this Note introduces a working definition for "catcalls" and describes how they fit as a subcategory within "street harassment."17...