Ms. Silverman’s comedy laid the groundwork for the prolific Whitney Cummings, another coarse, sexually frank female stand-up comic more likely to be roasting than retiring. Her two new sitcoms, “Whitney,” on NBC, which she created, produced and stars in, and “2 Broke Girls,” on CBS, for which she is a co-producer and co-creator, have done well enough to receive full-season orders. The slightly funnier of these conventionally bland shows, “2 Broke Girls,” does employ several lame jokes that mention rape, and while the show has drawn some criticism, it is probably not nearly as much as a network comedy would have received a decade ago.

Where you really see the influence of Ms. Silverman is in the clubs, in the most unfiltered of art forms, where performers can work out their material with a minimum of interference or trace of concern about standards or demographics. Phoebe Robinson, a petite comedian from Cleveland who has the wry smile of your kid sister, delivers amusingly dry observations about dating, catcalls and Facebook. Her material is tautly written but not particularly risky, except for one joke that received the loudest laugh both times I saw her perform.

“When I watch a movie where there’s a really good-looking rapist,” she says, her tone lilting upward before hitting the punch line on a low note, “I think about the girl: Why are you complaining?”

She sort of apologizes for the joke by looking disappointed with the crowd’s approval.

Tina Fey tried a similar tactic with a controversial scene on “30 Rock” in which her character, Liz Lemon, acts disgusted when her longtime confidant Pete Hornberger describes having sex with his wife while she was sleeping. There’s no such softening, however, in the frighteningly polished and deftly performed assault on good taste that is the stand-up routine of Amy Schumer.