Television: So This Woman Walks Into A Sitcom...

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The bigger reason has more to do with what men like to laugh at than with what they like to look at. Silverman learned at a young age to work blue from a male mentor--her dad, who taught her to swear for laughs--and as a grownup, she dishes out potty jokes in man-sized portions. In her sitcom's pilot, her character tries to pass gas to impress her friends and does, er, something else; a spotlight hits her pained face as the set goes into a theatrical blackout. ("It's like Our Town," Silverman says, "if Our Town were about s____ing your pants.")

Another influence was growing up Jewish in New Hampshire, "a blond, L.L. Bean environment," says Silverman, where she recalls being called "ape arms" for her hirsuteness. Like a lot of comedians, she considers her humor a "survival skill," and if the epitome of male humor is bonding-by-insult, she can snap a towel as well as any dude. She won Kimmel over with a put-down at a Friars Club roast for Hugh Hefner. "We just came across the index card she wrote the joke on," he says. "I introduced her, and she said, 'Jimmy Kimmel: he's fat and has no charisma. Watch your back, Danny Aiello.'" She's like the smart pretty girl who makes fun of the football players. Young men find her if not attainable--although there is the whole Kimmel thing--at least accessible. "You want to make out with her," says her sitcom's co-creator, Rob Schrab, "but she's also the kind of girl you can hang out with and say anything."

But it's the larger themes of her work that have most in common with male comics. Like Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat), she combines filthy humor with social commentary, playing a naïf who sweetly embodies ugly prejudices. Like Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm), she plays a self-centered alter ego who stomps on p.c. taboos. There's a Fear Factor aggressiveness to this brand of humor--daring people to swallow something unpleasant--which may be why fewer women have done it, or at least have been accepted for it.

One of those few is Roseanne Barr, who feels a kinship with Silverman. "The best comics are mirrors, and she is full-length," Barr e-mailed TIME. "She is early Lenny Bruce if he was a girl who grew up reading Hannah Arendt." Says comedian Bob Odenkirk, who worked with Silverman in the '90s on HBO's Mr. Show with Bob and David: "Guys have a certain assaultive brashness, and she has that strength in her voice. There's a kind of plainspoken harshness to her that's disarming and surprising. And a big part of making people laugh is to surprise them."

Her breakout surprise came in the 2005 documentary The Aristocrats, which tells the history of a famously dirty joke about a vaudeville family with an unspeakable act. Whereas most of the male comedians try to top one another with gross embellishments, Silverman delivers it as a quiet monologue about being raped as a girl--fictionally, and ludicrously--by elderly talk-show host Joe Franklin. It was not the dirtiest but the most disturbing--and therefore funniest--take on the joke in the movie.