UW Teacher Takes Steps To Change Gender

Speaking on the phone yesterday to arrange a social engagement, Sabrina Ramet, 41, asked a question that few people ever need ask.

``Do I need to come female?''

Ramet is a transsexual who, after decades of delay, is at last becoming what she believes she has always been - a woman.

For the past year she has dressed and acted as a man professionally but worn women's clothing in private. The complicated logistics of alternating between Sabrina and Pedro, her given name, sometimes included changing outfits four times a day.

The men's clothes will be gone soon, as will the double identity. The University of Washington professor announced this week to

colleagues that she will live only as a woman beginning next Friday. The University Daily carried an article on the announcement.

A public revelation of her gender change is necessary because she is in a public profession, said Ramet, who is an associate professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at UW. The only alternative would be to create a new life elsewhere.

``I remain dedicated to teaching. I love teaching. And I don't want to give this up,'' she said during an interview in her Wallingford apartment.

The teacher is also a scholar, with four books on Eastern European and Soviet politics to her credit. Her next work, now in manuscript, traces the cultural and political roots of the changes sweeping that region.

Only a few people at the Jackson School knew her secret before the Monday announcement, and Ramet worried about the reaction. So far, she has been reassured.

Ramet's stress over her identity goes back to age 10 and the beginning of puberty, when she was disturbed by new body hair and other physical changes.

Within a few years, she was convinced that she was a woman in every respect but anatomy. But decades of emotional turmoil followed, ``struggling with it, repressing myself, denying it, saying it wasn't true.''

She even married, and stayed married 16 years. ``Many of those years were quite happy.'' She considers herself a happy person generally.

But a year ago, Ramet plunged into months of depression, and she decided to become physically the woman she felt she had been all along.

``Trying to suppress it never worked. It always came back. And when it returned in late 1989 it was very strong. I just knew that I couldn't go on.''

With hormones, electrolysis and voice lessons, Ramet has begun the gradual transition that will culminate at least a year from now in genital surgery. Individual therapy and meetings with a support group are also part of the process.

Experts have not established the origin of transsexuality, but there is evidence that it is genetically determined. Reliable statistics apparently are not available; Ramet said about eight new people annually show up seeking help at Seattle's Ingersol Gender Center.

The professor has asked colleagues and friends to call her Sabrina and use the pronoun ``she,'' and it matters little to her that her body so far remains obviously male.

``We're not talking about logic. We're talking about one's identity,'' she said. ``I feel like a woman.''