Having created herself in the image "the archetypal male impersonator" Suzi Quatro, Joan Jett typifies a long dureè of what rock critics Simon Reynolds and Joy Press call "female maschisma" in rock (244).  Jett was first a hanger-on at Rodney's English Disco, a hub for rockers and their female groupies. Jett was having none of the latter. She formed the band The Runaways in 1975 with Sandy West in collaboration with producer Kim Fowley and went on to have a notable solo career with her band Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. She was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 and is unofficially known as the Godmother of Punk. In some ways her solo success ,Jett's tomboy aesthetic may have informed generations of female musicians striving to be one of the boys, but she also served as a crucial pivot point for the sound, aesthetics, and gender dynamics bridging American glitter and L.A.'s hardcore punk scene.  

Fowley's savvy orchestration of The Runaways says much about the ambivalent sexual attitudes and gender codes coming out of the L.A. music scene at thus time. With the consolidation of the music business in Los Angeles, the late 1960s and early 70s "scene" was a mix a industry emigres, indigenous talent, and international visitors. All turning around a rough axis of the Sunset Strip, the late 60s' bucolic tones and soft sexisms of Laurel Canyon's mixed-gender singer-song writers spilled down the hill to a 70's version of guyville, with entourages of young women following bands between Rodney's and the Continental Hyatt, or "Riot House." By this time, the Joni Mitchells of the earlier scene were replaced with groupies like Pamela des Barres, author of I'm with the Band (1987), and artist Cynthia "Plaster Caster" Albiritton, famous for casting molds of rock stars' erect phalluses. While such super-groupies should be considered performance artists in their own right, their "groupie art" only shows how far glam/glitter and the L.A. music scene in particular had marginalized female music performers by the mid 70s. The ongoing archiving of this scene yeilds as many stories of troubling exploitation and abuse as tales of heterosocial support and female bonding. Groupies constituted their own subculture, replete with a short lived magazine Star Groupie, and arguably underscored the conspicuous lack of women making music themselves. A number of future female punk musicians and scenesters note that they emulated Rodney's groupies (Violence Girl 88, Neutron 14).As Alice Bag theorizes, "Groupies were an example of teenage audiophilia taken to one possible conclusion" (Violence 106). Like Jett, Bag would bypass this conclusion and take the stage. 

In addition to steering around the hegemonic groupie role, a tough girl crew like the Runaways had to carve out a space in glam and glitter where the boys seemed to own both masculinity and femininity. Bands like the New York Dolls performed in dresses and make-up but were cis and straight identified. As singer Michael des Barres bluntly puts it, "Androgyny didn't necessarily mean that you sucked cocks if you were a guy" (Neutron 18). Whereas famous acts like Marc Bolan of T-Rex and David Bowie could flaunt feminine style and flirt with bisexuality, the open gayness of American artists like Jobriath proved fatal. Lisa Fancher, founder of Frontier Records, notes that, "[Jobriath] was on the sides of buses, full-page ads in Rolling Stone. But he was just so flamboyantly gay, and rock fans just weren't really digging it, so Jobraith was just wiped off the face of the earth" (Neutron 10). [note: He fell into obscurity, returned to prostitution, and died of HIV related illness in 1983.]

Although girl-on-girl action for the benefit of male titillation was encouraged in the groupie world, overt lesbianism likewise seemed too much in this scene. When gossip circulated that members of the Runaways were gay, "Kim [Fowley] got all these pictures of us taken with [male] rock stars and tried to have them published everywhere to dispel those rumors," according to bassist Jackie Fox (Neutron 52). Lead guitarist Lita Ford reports learning that "gay existed" from her band mates and deciding to be ok with it. Accordiing to journalist Don Waller, Fowley went on a homophobic "tirade when Joan Jett was living in his apartment. 'She's eating pussy in my house!'" (Neutron 51). Fowley designed The Runaways to be a terror, and necessarily a heterosexual one, to the masculinist rock world that had not seen a teen all-girl band for a while, and certainly not one that would "have ya, grab ya, til you're sore!" 

Such mixes of macho and androgynous style, as well as accepting and condemning attitudes to alternate sexuality, seem to have transited the glam/glitter and punk scenes in the 1970s LA.  As the Runaways were dissolving, Jett embraced all things punk. Joan Jett’s apartment (located on San Vicente and Sunset) acted as a central hub for young punks like Darby Crash and Pat Smear (then known simply as Paul and George). Her hosting style included her famous "pissicles" --  popsicles made of urine. (Lexicon 50).  She would go on to produce the Germs' 1979 album "G.I."  Jett, having seen the Germs live numerous times, felt that she could capture their energy, specifically Darby's, as an oxymoronic contained chaos. Overall, she served as a kind of mother/sister/role model figure for a punk LA world that understood itself as a rough society of orphans.