The Quantum Leap: How One Moment Redefined My Identity
A pivotal moment in the life of Jay Siegmann of Wild Lion*esses Pride
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I was deeply touched to read Jay Siegmann’s submission about coming out non-binary in 2021—in a “quantum transformation,” Jay discovered a deep new truth at age 53. Life’s like that, isn’t it?
“…[L]ife’s a long undressing. We came in puling and naked, and every stitch must come off before we get out again. We must stand on our feet in all our Rabelaisian nakedness…”
- Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
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I felt a profound sense of freedom, wholeness, and an unshakeable clarity that washed over me in seconds. In that moment, I knew I was no longer Judith. I was Jay.
As Jay—diverse in gender, non-binary in identity, woman-loving in orientation—I felt whole for the first time. At age 53, my search for my true self ended in an authentic new beginning.
— Jay Siegmann
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The Quantum Leap: How One Moment Redefined My Identity
The pivotal moment that led to a profound transformation and the courage it took to embrace a true self beyond labels.
by Jay Siegmann of
The Courage to come out
In the summer of 1986, I made a choice that changed everything: I came out as a lesbian in my small German town. Legal uncertainty shrouded homosexuality in those days; the laws explicitly targeted men yet cast a shadow over anyone who was queer. Living openly as a queer person felt dangerous, and my coming out tested the loyalty of my closest friends. As I shared my truth, three-quarters of them vanished, fear scattering them faster than acceptance.
Confronting the economic of "Me"
That autumn, I entered the economics department—a temple of rationality with its clean lines, sharp minds, and sharper judgments. My peers, wrapped in carefully chosen skirt suits and pantsuits, cast barely a glance my way, their indifference as deliberate as their attire. My jeans and sneakers marked me as an immediate outlier, but it wasn’t just the clothing. I brought questions they hadn’t anticipated, perspectives that unsettled their polished theories of how the world should work.
In the 1980s, business administration promoted a new ethos, one that prioritized profit and privatization above all else. The culture shifted from “we” to “me,” where shareholder value defined success, and personal gain trumped collective well-being. Germany’s own Peter Thiel, born in 1967 like me, would go on to exemplify this profit-driven generation. Together with others like Elon Musk, Thiel moved to the center of global finance and attempted to play a defining role in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Their influence underscores how wealth now holds the power to sway, even buy, political outcomes. Financial power has tipped the scales of democracy, with Trump securing victory and Musk positioning himself as the enabler of unchecked influence.
Disillusioned by this shift, I switched from business administration to economics. Economics wasn’t much better, but it at least invited discussions on how economic forces affect people’s lives. Still, in those Göttingen lecture halls under an all-male professorship, I saw professors dismiss questions about social justice as naive, parading conformity as competence and passing unexamined ideology off as objective truth.
Through these years, I learned as much about power as I did about markets. Professors preached the inevitability of rational actors and efficient systems, yet human complexity defied their equations at every turn. I began to see that these theories were about far more than markets—they were about how systems operate and, more critically, how they fail us.
My early search for Belonging
Beyond academia, I stumbled across contradictions in unexpected places. Seeking refuge, I joined the local women’s and lesbian center, hoping to find a space for genuine revolutionary thought. These were the days of the RAF, or Rote Armee Fraktion—a German far-left militant group that bombed and assassinated to protest capitalism and what they saw as a fascist state. The early Green Party emerged, as did “Antifa,” and the center embraced concepts of Basisdemokratie—grassroots democracy—sometimes to the point of paralysis.
Every Saturday, the center hosted the Frauenkneipe, an alternative, women-only disco that began as a café in the afternoon and evolved into a full-fledged dance night. Debates could drag on for hours over details, like whether lesbian mothers could bring their sons. After weeks of debate, the group reached a consensus—boys could attend up to the age of 10, while girls, of course, were welcome indefinitely. Then came the question of beverages. The center had to generate some income, so we sold drinks and homemade food. Yet each week, the plenum agonized for hours over which brands to buy, how many bottles, who would pick them up, and inevitably critiqued last week’s choices. Every time I suggested streamlining the process, the discussions only intensified.
One day, I proposed appointing a small group of women to handle these decisions and organize a regular supplier. My suggestion triggered outrage. Some women saw my proposal as blasphemy—a betrayal of grassroots democracy and an attempt to impose a patriarchal hierarchy. But after much debate, I convinced them to try it for four weeks, with a review at the end. Those four weeks were eye-opening: we not only brought in more income but also spent less by offering what women genuinely liked, rather than what was “socially acceptable.” Though the results spoke for themselves, some women continued clinging to anarchistic and communist principles that had never resonated with me.
Political tension and rebellion weren’t new to me, but I couldn’t connect with Germany’s Antifa movement or some of the communist ideals circulating in these circles. To me, Antifa represented the flip side of fascism—a force that, even if well-intentioned, felt equally polarizing and far from constructive. My twenties stretched out as a balancing act between two worlds: in one, I stood as the unwelcome auditor—too analytical for the activists, too radical for the economists. In both, I saw how carefully they constructed boundaries to protect their beliefs, and I became the walking contradiction that exposed their limits.
Love, Loss and Lockdown Reflections
In 1997, my path took an unexpected turn. I met the woman who would become the love of my life. For 23 years, we lived an unconventional, openly acknowledged, patchwork rainbow family relationship. She remained married to her husband and had three children. Despite the unusual nature of our relationship, we found a rhythm and balance together, building a family that defied conventions and, perhaps because of that, felt even more true. With her, I discovered a love that grounded and freed me, creating a sanctuary amid my journey through questions of identity and purpose. Then, in March 2020, everything changed.
Her passing shifted my world completely. Grateful for our years together, I now faced an abyss I hadn’t anticipated. And then the COVID-19 lockdown forced me back to myself. With fewer external distractions, I found myself on many lonely evenings on my balcony, searching for answers to life’s questions and reorienting my path. The questions that arose—“Where should my path lead now?” “How do I want to live?” “What are my goals?”—left me with more questions than answers. Within me, I found hidden rooms and locked doors, dark caves, and buried tunnels. The deeper I ventured, the dimmer my hope became of finding answers that could bring clarity.
I admitted to myself that I couldn’t answer all these questions alone, so I sought professional support. Coaching offered a new perspective, revealing that perhaps I had been asking the right questions at the wrong time. By late 2020, I realized I was still deeply tangled in societal norms and the heteronormative conventions around me, as well as in my own internalized beliefs. These old thoughts and conventions blocked my path forward.
The Quantum Transformation: Becoming Jay
Then came my “10-Second Quantum Transformation.” It happened on January 24, 2021, alone in my bathroom, in a moment that would forever change my life.
For years, I had quietly loved reading erotic lesbian novels, though certain details left me conflicted. Every time a strap-on appeared in these stories, I felt a stirring, something I couldn’t quite place but knew was meaningful. My prudish upbringing and the feeling that strap-ons belonged to some forbidden realm kept me from exploring this part of myself, even with my partner. But as 2021 began, I gave myself a gift to the new year: I ordered one, telling myself I’d try it when the time felt right. It arrived around January 13, and as I worked up the courage, I found myself unexpectedly menstruating, the timing of which stretched on longer than usual, adding to my anticipation.
Finally, on that Sunday morning, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. Standing there alone, I strapped it on for the first time, ready for awkwardness, uncertainty—anything. But instead, as I looked in the mirror, something clicked. The awkwardness I had anticipated never arrived. Instead, I felt a profound sense of freedom, wholeness, and an unshakeable clarity that washed over me in seconds. In that moment, I knew I was no longer Judith. I was Jay.
As Jay—diverse in gender, non-binary in identity, woman-loving in orientation—I felt whole for the first time. At age 53, my search for my true self ended in an authentic new beginning, one that even a new birth certificate soon made official.
I saw this inner transformation needed an external one as well. In February 2021, I received a certificate from my doctor, submitted a request for a gender and name change at the registry office, and by month’s end, held my new birth certificate in hand. I made a small mark in Einbeck’s history, becoming the first person with a diverse gender entry in the town’s birth register. I felt grateful for the support of those who helped me on this path and for the connection and appreciation I experienced in coming out as myself.
Living beyond Labels
Today, I encounter the daily chorus of “Herr” and “Frau” as it persists. Each interaction reveals the power of language to shape—or confine—understanding. In a culture where gender permeates every sentence, even simple conversations turn into complex negotiations of identity and recognition. While legal progress moves forward, old habits and social norms cling stubbornly to the past. This resistance doesn’t stem from a lack of understanding but rather from society’s reluctance to evolve.
Challenging these systems, however, opens vast spaces within me. The pain of not belonging carves deep chambers of insight. Each attempt to force me into prescribed roles reveals even more about how those roles fail us all. Healing doesn’t mean finding comfortable answers; it means learning to live in the questions.
Today, I move through spaces with the precision of an economist and the persistence of a philosopher. The contradictions I embody—academic and activist, analytical and intuitive, structured and fluid—don’t represent wounds to be healed but tools for understanding. Each one offers a different lens for examining how identity is constructed, maintained, and, at times, transcended.
Some days, I am all questions.
Other days, I am the answer no one expected.
To those navigating similar waters: your discomfort in existing categories isn’t failure—it’s insight. The spaces where you don’t quite fit don’t reflect inadequacy but reveal the limits of the categories themselves. Your journey through these territories, however lonely, is vital theoretical work. You’re challenging, documenting, and dismantling the very systems that claim to define us.
I am still becoming.
Still questioning.
Still discovering new dimensions of possibility.
The revolution, I’ve learned, lies not in finding the right label but in exposing the inadequacy of labels altogether. And within that exposure, we find our freedom.
BIO: German writer. Non-binary and lesbian, engaged with the queer community in Germany since 1986. My storytelling explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, and identity, shaped by societal norms, patriarchy, and historical belief systems. I reflect on how these forces influenced me as a child and adult, shaping both personal and collective experiences. Through deeply personal texts, I examine the ways epigenetics, intersectionality, and societal expectations intertwine, revealing their enduring impact on who we are and how we navigate the world today. Wishing you a wonderful transition from this year into the next or as we say in Germany "Einen Guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr."
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Thanks @Nan Tepper for your kind words
I love this community SO much. What a haven for us. Thank you, Troy and thank you, Jay. And also some gratitude for the mention, but mostly for promoting Jodi Sh. Doff's new stack. Jodi's the bomb. Just love her.