Joan Jett is one of her generation's most iconic female rock artists. She is known for her music as the founding member of Runway and the frontman of the band Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. And the icon has been at it since she was a mere 15 years old.

In 2022, she launched a new album comprising the acoustic versions of her greatest 25 hits, including Bad Reputation and Cherry Bomb. 

Up till now, her music career has been highly publicized. She has discussed her life in music in detail.

However, she has left people to assume things about her personal life for many years. She is extremely private about her personal life and believes that her music does the talking. 

Hence, people's assumptions about her sexuality and enigmatic dating life have always interested rock fans and the public. Many want to know the preferred term she uses to define her sexuality or if she ever came out as gay. 

This article will cover the personal life of the legendary musician, from her dating status to her sexuality. 

What is Joan Jett's gender?

Jett was biologically born as a female and is the oldest of her parents' three children. Born on September 22, 1958 (age 64) in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, U.S., to an insurance salesman father and secretary mother, Joan Jett's birth name is Joan Marie Larkin. The family was protestant but not overly strict in implementing their religious beliefs.  

Jett started playing guitar at the age of 13, and her family always supported her music. They told her from the beginning that she could become whatever she liked. "My parents told me I could be anything I wanted to be when I was five years old, and I believed them," she shared. 

Young Jett turned out to be a dreamer as she grew up. She believed that women could make a name in rock and roll and the scene was not only compatible with men. 

She changed her name to Joan Jett after her parents divorced. 

Is Joan Jett a lesbian?

Besides her dating life, Jett has always refrained from making explicit statements about her sexuality.

From her early days in the spotlight, people have always speculated if she was lesbian or bisexual. However, she has never added to those rumors.

When talking to Out Magazine in 1994, she refused to put any label on herself and asked people to "assume away" instead when asked the time she came out as gay. "I'm saying believe what you want," she said.

Joan Jett has never explicitly talked about having a romaantic partner or whether she is a lesbian.

Joan Jett. (Photo: Instagram)

And in 2006, when asked if she was a lesbian, she said, "I never made any kind of statement about my personal life on any level. I never made any proclamations."

But in 2018, when a New York Times interviewer asked her to comment on her sexuality and how she had never come out publicly, she pointed toward her necklace, which was "Two labryses, or axes, crossing each other, inside of two women's symbols crossing each other," and a similar tattoo on her lower back.

"I don't know how much more you can declare," she snapped back but didn't want to give people the satisfaction of getting to her.

"I'm not going to be told how to live and how I can be myself," she said. "The more you want me to say it, the more I won't say it."

The fact is that Jett has not let any term defines her as a person. That is why she hasn't come forward to directly support or raise voices on the issues faced by the LGBTIQ+ community despite having many queer female fans. She only acknowledged herself as a feminist icon later in her life.

"I don't need a movement like [feminism] to make me feel like a person," Jett said in 1981. However, Intomore reports that the musician later backed off from her earlier statements to "mend [her ways to feminism" and became involved with riot grrrls and befriended Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna and was acknowledged likewise. 

Talking to Rollingstone in May 2022, when asked what suggestions she would give her younger self, she said, "To try to control my emotions a little bit better. When I was younger, [I was] very emotional, in a sense that I would take great offense to people talking about, "Girls can't play rock," whatever it was. I was quick to anger, and so I would just try to be a lot more patient. And I've never been one to read my own press, because I figured if you believe the good stuff, you got to believe the bad stuff, too. You're only going to find misery.. … I would definitely encourage people not to do that — not to Google yourself."

The suggestions show that Jett has always focused on her career and musicianship rather than anything else. She didn't let her gender define her. She set a great example for millions of young individuals in her journey.

Is Joan Jett married? Relationship history inside

No, Jett isn't married and has no kids. Not to the public knowledge, anyway. She's not had a husband or a wife yet (unless she's hiding things). 

Jett hasn't really been the kind of person to discuss her romantic relationships in public, either. So much of her dating life is just rumors and hookups that did not become something more.

One of her first hookups dates back to the late 1900s. Then, Jett had hooked up with Kira Roessler, an Emmy-winning musician and dialogue editor.

During an interview with Alice Bag in 2015, she revealed she had slept with Jett. "The only woman I ever had sex with was Joan Jett because she was/is so amazing," she said in the interview. However, that ended with that.

Jett's next fling was with Cherie Currie, her band member in The Runaways. Reportedly, according to a 2010 Hitfix interview, Jett and Currie had "experimented" together in 1976.

This was somewhat corroborated when Lita Ford revealed in her memoir, Living Like A Runaway, in 2016 that she had once left the band after finding out all except one band member were interested in women.

Among these members included Jett and Cherie, who were "always together 'in a romantic way.'" She wrote, "I found out that Cherie was messing around with Joan. I was so freaked out that I quit the band."

This fling, too, doesn't seem to have resulted in anything long-term for either of them.

Her third widely reported relationship (if you could even call these that) came in the mid-2000s. This time, it was Jett and Carmen Electra, an American model, and actress.

In November 2006, reports suggested Jett had been packing on the PDA with Electra after one of her concerts in Los Angeles. They apparently first got close after Electra appeared in Jett's music video in May of that year.

A few reports followed, claiming that Jett planned to attend the Dinah Shore Weekend in California, also known as the "lesbian prom," in March 2007 with her reported partner.

However, other reports that same month suggested they had discontinued their relationship. In August, some sources suggested they had been together for a year or so before finally calling it quits.

The alleged breakup wasn't the end of their friendship, though, as Electra appeared at a Jett concert as recently as March 2014 to support her reportedly former girlfriend.

There are many other rumors about Jett's dating life, with people like Chuck Zito, John Lydon, Billy Idol, Dee Dee Ramone, Pleasant Gehman, Tom Petersson, and Danny Bonaduce, but nothing to suggest those actually happened.