After a brief sojourn in California, during which she was active in the Venice chapter of the GLF, Jay returned to New York, having been awarded a teaching assistantship in French at NYU in the fall of 1971.

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Jay found a calling in education. She "would spend more than a decade working as a migrant laborer in the fields of academe, with part-time positions at several different universities" while pursuing post-graduate studies. She earned a master's degree in comparative literature in 1978 and a doctorate in 1984.

In 1975 Jay began teaching at Pace University, where she has risen to the status of Distinguished Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies. She has founded and taught numerous courses in Lesbian and Gay Studies, Women's Studies, literature, rhetoric, and creative writing, and has received honors including the university's Kenan Award for Excellence in Teaching (2000) and the Diversity Leadership Award (2004).

An an author and editor, Jay has made significant contributions to the field of GLBTQ Studies. Her first book, Out of the Closet: Voices of Gay Liberation (1972), an anthology that she co-edited with Allen Young, remains in print and was included on Publishers Triangle's list of "the one hundred most important gay and lesbian books ever published." The two also collaborated on After You're Out: Personal Experiences of Gay Men and Lesbian (1975) and Lavender Culture (1978).

Jay's dissertation on the writers and lovers Natalie Clifford Barney and Renée Vivien, published in 1988 as The Amazon and the Page, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, as was Lesbian Texts and Contexts: Radical Revisions (1990), which she co-edited with Joanne Glasgow. Jay won the award in the category of Lesbian Studies for Dyke Life: From Growing Up to Growing Old (1995).

Jay has also written articles for numerous publications, including Ms. magazine, the Village Voice, The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage, and the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide. Her fiction and satirical writings have been published in Women of Mystery, Lesbian Self-Writing, and Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, among others.

Jay has served on the editorial or advisory boards of numerous glbtq and women's publications and also on the board of the Lambda Literary Foundation. Her work for equality has earned her many awards, including the Medal of Honor from the Veteran Feminists of America and the Michael Lynch Service Award from the Gay and Lesbian Caucus of the Modern Language Association. She has also been chosen as the Grand Marshal of the Stonewall Pride Parade on two occasions.

In recent years, Jay has been speaking out on behalf of people with disabilities. In early 2004 she lost her near vision due to a rare condition known as choroidal neovascularization. Several operations have brought no improvement.

To Jay, among the most distressing consequences was her inability to read the majority of printed matter. She discovered that very little glbtq material exists in the National Library Service's offerings of talking books and magazines on tape. She therefore called upon the Lambda Literary Foundation "to take on literary accessibility for the blind and visually impaired as one of its missions."

Jay has been frustrated by the frequent lack of accommodation in public areas, a common problem for people with invisible disabilities. "Being a lesbian has helped me in this regard," she stated. "I already know what it's like to be different in ways that others can't see."

Jay is the life partner of Karen F. Kerner, an emergency medicine physician and assistant clinical professor of medicine at Columbia. The couple officially registered as domestic partners on May 1, 1996 in New York City, where they reside.

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