Assertiveness skills should be made available to both potential victims and assailants. Potential victims may appropriately employ assertiveness instead of passivity when attempting to make their own wishes known and honored. Potential assailants may only know how to be aggressive regarding their wishes and may therefore be able to keep a situation from turning into rape by exercising assertiveness rather than aggression. The suggestions offered to help women become more assertive recognize that men are generally responsible for committing sexual assaults. Consequently, women need to protect themselves from sexual assault victimization. At the same time, therapists need to inform victims and potential victims that, regardless of what they do to prevent or avoid sexual assault, the assailant and not the victim is to blame. Sexual aggression among acquaintances violates individual rights and represents an abuse of power and control. Because the greatest risk women face as a potential sexual assault victim is the risk of acquaintance rape, women should understand patterns in acquaintance rape. Women should also realize that lack of assertiveness may contribute to sexual assault involvement. Moreover, women have traditionally been socialized to think that sex should be saved for those they love. Females are also socialized to please others and not to embarrass themselves or others, which may cause them to ignore their instincts about a potentially dangerous situation. If a woman feels threatened and has responded assertively by asking for what she wants and the situation becomes even more dangerous, she may need to use physical self-defense. Low self-esteem may contribute to victimization, teaching assertive skills may prevent sexual assault involvement if the potential victim feels she can stand up for her rights, potential male assailants need to change their behavior to keep acquaintance rape from occurring, and practitioners need to provide assertiveness skills and training to clients in both individual and group settings. Appendixes contain additional information on sexually assertive communication training techniques. 32 references