Sarah Silverman in trouble for tweet

Emmy Award-winning comedian Sarah Silverman has found herself in hot water after re-tweeting a tongue-in-cheek list of rape-prevention tips for men on March 20.

“These are great – send to all the men in ur life,” Silverman wrote as she shared a graphic of the tips, which include such pointers as “Don’t put drugs in women’s drinks” and “Use the buddy system! If it is inconvenient for you to stop yourself from raping women, ask a trusted friend to accompany you at all times.”

The original post containing the list was uploaded in May 2011 by Leigh Hofheimer, program coordinator of the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

“A co-worker of mine recently created this list,” Hofheimer wrote on the original post. “As I was reading, I couldn’t decide if I should laugh or be horrified by the reality that violence prevention tips are always at what the targeted person should do (judgment strongly implied) to protect themselves.”

But contrary to the stereotype of the sense-of-humor-challenged feminist, this time it was men who took offense. Paul Jukes replied to Silverman on Twitter: “Rather harsh on those of us who, you know, wouldn’t dream of hurting anyone.” Mac, another Twitter member, wrote: “This is so offensive to men. What an awful subtext you’re propagating.”

“Yeah, it’s extremely offensive,” Zac Lee wrote. “It implies that it’s common for men to think about ways to rape girls, when that’s nonsense.” Some, like Ben Morphy, evidently felt that Silverman had missed her mark and used sarcasm to get their own point across. “I feel like battling sexism with sexist propaganda is the best way to promote sexism,” Morphy wrote.

A Twitter member who goes by Master of Disguise wrote: “Thank you. All us men need to be reminded of #3 from time to time.” (Number 3 on the list is: “If you pull over to help a woman whose car has broken down, remember not to rape her.”)

But not all the responses were angry. “I get the point,” D Kramer of Seattle replied. “We always tell the women they are responsible to prevent rape and not the men.”

Can You Relate? — the website of the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence where the original post appeared — thanked Silverman for her tweet last Friday. “Sarah Silverman likes us! Thanks for tweeting our Rape Prevention Tips post, Sarah.”

The viral response to Silverman’s post – which has been re-tweeted and favorited thousands of times – warranted a post on her own website. “We’re finally giving in and saying something about the week-long, expanding online ‘discussion’ of Sarah’s March 20 tweet of these ‘rape prevention tips,'” reads her home page’s top post from Friday. “And that’s only because there is so much online about it, we don’t want people who come here for Sarah news to think we don’t cover ‘Everything Sarah.’ The simple facts are: 1. It’s a re-tweet (See the ‘RT’ in the tweet?); she didn’t write it. It’s years old. 2. Most of the people writing online with aghast objections are criticizing Sarah for writing them. Why even respond to people who are that dumb?”