Reframing conversations this Sexual Assault Awareness Month

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, a time meant to focus attention on a problem that can be hard to look at. It is, at its core, an effort to make something visible that too many people prefer not to examine. The teal ribbons, public service announcements and resource guides seen throughout the month all attempt to do the same thing: remind us that sexual violence exists and that it demands collective attention. April serves as a necessary pause, giving us a moment to consider what safety truly means, and who is expected to maintain it.

What becomes clear during this pause is how much our understanding of safety is built on regulating women’s behavior.

For women, the safety advice is familiar, and rarely questioned by society. Walk in groups. Watch your drink. Do not stay out too late. Be careful what you wear. Let someone know where you are going. Carry pepper spray. Take self-defense classes. Buy an extra lock for your door. Avoid certain areas or activities. The list is so common that it has begun to feel like background noise, a routine set of instructions offered out of concern and repeated out of a combination of habit and fear. It is usually framed as care, and often it is. Parents say it to daughters because they want them to be safe. Friends say it to one another because they worry. Institutions say it because they feel responsible for prevention.

But this concern, even when genuine, has a way of revealing assumptions and shaping our conversations around sexual violence.

The assumption arises that safety depends primarily on the vigilance of potential victims. The assumption is that if women and other feminine-presenting individuals are careful enough, prepared enough, alert enough, and, often, modest enough, they can manage the risks they face. This does not mean the advice is useless — being aware of surroundings and staying in contact with friends can help in many situations — but it does mean that the burden of prevention is unevenly distributed. Growing up as a woman means being trained to anticipate harm long before harm ever occurs. Late-night walks come with keys clutched between knuckles, and frequent glances over the shoulder. Often, when harm does occur, it is looked at through the lens of what the victim could have done better. What were they wearing? How much were they drinking?

By contrast, men are rarely trained in the same sustained and systematic way to ensure that they do not cause harm.

This is not to suggest that men are universally violent or that sexual assault only occurs in one direction. Sexual violence can impact anyone. It is important to remember that people of all genders and orientations can be victims or perpetrators. Many cases do not fit neatly into simple categories or frameworks. Still, the broader pattern remains difficult to ignore. Statistics consistently show that most sexual assaults are committed by men against women. Yet the most consistent prevention messaging we see focuses on women’s behavior rather than on men’s responsibility.

Many boys grow up with messaging telling them to be tough. Dominant. From an early age, our society normalizes certain power dynamics between men and women, boys and girls. In the early years, schoolyard teasing is often dismissed as “boys being boys.” Later, peer pressure around relationships and “locker room talk” continue to exert their influences on how many young men think and speak about the opposite sex.

The result of these deeply ingrained societal patterns is an imbalance in how accountability is discussed. After an assault, questions often turn toward the victim and their actions. These questions are framed as attempts to understand what happened, but they often carry a subtler implication — that different choices might have prevented the outcome. The focus drifts away from the central fact that someone chose to commit harm. Many victims struggle to come forward, or never do, because of the vitriol and accusations of lying or promiscuity they so often face.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month, at its best, can be a chance to challenge this drift. It creates space to talk about consent, about respect, about the responsibility people have to one another in both private and public spaces. It gives us a chance to think about how we frame conversations around sexual assault, and ensure that rather than ending with warnings for women to be careful, these discussions begin with the expectation that people should not harm others in the first place. Awareness, in this sense, can become less about fear and more about accountability.

What would it look like if that accountability were the default? It would look like boys being taught as consistently as girls that boundaries matter. It would look like conversations about consent being as routine as conversations about personal safety. It would look like shifting the emphasis from avoiding risk to preventing harm. In many places, from households and schools to broader forums, these conversational shifts are already occurring. But there is still work to be done.

The need for caution will always remain, but caution, in discussions about sexual assault, should not be mistaken for responsibility. The responsibility lies with the person who commits the assault, not with the person who failed to anticipate it.

The point of awareness, after all, is not simply to notice a problem. It is to understand it clearly enough to change the norms that allow it to persist.