If you walked past the T-shirt laden clotheslines on Glenn Terrell Mall or heard the chanting of Take Back the Night demonstrators Wednesday evening, you witnessed a dialogue about sexual and domestic abuse. This dialogue characterized the Week Without Violence in which student and community organizations collaborated to give a voice to those who suffer in silence.

The YWCA, a multicultural women’s organization on campus, successfully organized both the Clothesline Project and the Take Back the Night rally.

“If we, as a community, can imagine a life without violence, we can begin to make it a reality,” said Suzanne Hamada, program coordinator of the YWCA. “All of the activities this week were designed to encourage people to think about the values and behaviors that contribute to violence.” Some may have shied away from these events and their presumed feminist agendas. While both men and women can be victims of abuse, women account for 85 percent of intimate partner violence. But if you can step outside of the ideological quagmire that is feminism for a few moments, you should consider the implications of this abuse and the methods in place to prevent it.

The most disturbing aspect of these behaviors is the frequency in which they occur. In a recent American Journal of Preventive Medicine survey of women in Washington and Idaho, 44 percent of respondents said they had experienced intimate partner violence in their adult lifetime.

“Between July 2008 and June 2009, we provided services to 78 victims and survivors of sexual assault … and 155 victims and survivors of domestic violence in Whitman County,” said Bekah MillerMacPhee, a University of Idaho graduate and educator with the local nonprofit group, Alternatives to Violence of the Palouse.

The nonprofit also runs a confidential emergency shelter, where it housed 66 victims and survivors of sexual and domestic violence last year.

The existence of such shelters is crucial, especially when violence occurs at a largely intimate level. Many women remain in abusive relationships because they are financially dependent on their abuser, and shelters provide protection and resources to help victims achieve independence.

What’s even more troubling is the shortage of shelters. According to the Washington state Department of Social and Health Services, domestic violence programs had to refuse 36,522 requests for shelter in 2006. Many victims are actively seeking help, only to be turned away.

And because the plan for Washington state’s budget for the next two fiscal years includes a reduction of $28.9 million in supervision of lower-risk domestic and sexual offenders, the violence will continue. In the intimacy of the home, it will either be dismissed or ignored, because, after all, it is only a lower-risk brand of brutality.

Apparently, it does not matter that violence at the hands of a male partner is the leading cause of injury for women. The Washington state Domestic Violence Fatality Review found that in 2005, 50 percent of women who were murdered in Washington were killed by their current or former husband or boyfriend.

To honor these casualties and to support the victims and survivors of ongoing abuse is not a feminist goal. It is a goal with a pressing need for attention that echoed in the cries of protesters and hung heavily from the clotheslines on Glenn Terrell Mall.

As one T-shirt read, “No is a silent scream still stuck inside me.” That scream should be heard.