Sari M Van Ander
Biographic Data
| ID | 94099 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sari M Van Ander |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sari M |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Ander |
| SIGNATURE | VAN ANDER S M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5343-2059 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 72 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 478 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 72 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Sexual Fantasies Across Solitary and Partnered Contexts
Culturally-specific perceptions of age-related changes in femininity and masculinity in South Korea and Canada
There are widespread cultural assumptions that femininity and masculinity are innate, unchanging, and binary. But does everyone share this belief, and how might culture matter? Across two studies (Total N = 523), we asked Canadian and South Korean university students to rate how feminine and masculine a person is perceived to be across a lifespan. Both groups expected femininity and masculinity to shift. There were also culturally-specific belief…
Essentialist Beliefs About Sexual Orientation
Causal Attributions of Low Sexual Desire in Women Partnered with Men
From Testosterone to Racialization to Knobby Knees
This paper discusses ~15 years of my research on gender/sex. I first discuss how “sex versus gender” is an overlay onto “nature versus nurture” ideologies, and the ways these are unempirical (if not anti‐empirical), inaccurate, and unjust. I provide definitions of gender/sex, as well as gender and sex, and the pitfalls of “getting sex right” ideologies that aim to provide a singular universal definition of sex that belies its multiplicity, dynami…
Dimensions of psychological essentialism and attitudes toward sexual diversity
Gender/sex and predictors of transphobia
Reducing cisgender people’s prejudice toward gender/sex minorities with sexual configurations theory
Visualizing plurisexuality via sexual configurations theory
Sexual Desire in Postpartum Healthcare
Men and Women
Diversity in Partner Number Sexuality via Sexual Configurations Theory
Sex, Attraction, and Social Norms
Eye Contact in Porn
In pornography created for (and often by) heterosexual men, it is common for women performers to look directly at the camera. This simulates eye contact with viewers and is intended to create a participatory point of view. Little is known about the function of direct gaze in this context. In other domains, eye contact can increase physiological arousal, but also facilitate nurturant connection. Eye contact in porn may thus have a range of functio…
Gender/sex markers, bio/logics, and U.S. identity documents
Policies about changing gender/sex on identity documents provide insights into definitions of gender/sex, and impact especially transgender and/or nonbinary lives. We investigated these on U.S. driver's licenses and birth certificates to understand variability in these policies, including in comparison to an earlier report in 2014, and to explore what kinds of “bio/logics” (decision rules rooted in biological or biologistic thinking) might be at …
Gender pleasure and minoritized gender/sex/ual experiences
Gender expectations can be stifling but gender expressions can be liberating”
Gendered Failures and Achievements in Women’s Experiences of Men’s Orgasms
Sexual Norms Across Pornography Use, Sexual Fantasy, and In-Person Sexuality
How Feminist Heterosexual Men Navigate Their Sexual Desire While Following Feminist Principles
Feminist and queer science
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by American Psychological Association in Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity on 23 March 2023, available online: https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000646
It Depends! Contextual Variability in Feminist Identity Disclosure Among Binary and Nonbinary Individuals
The Heteronormativity Theory of Low Sexual Desire in Women Partnered with Men
Hormone therapy and trans sexuality
This is the Accepted Manuscript of an article published by the American Psychological Association in Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000588
The gender/sex 3×3
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by American Psychological Association in Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity on 24 February 2022, available online: https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000558
Beyond Sexual Orientation
Why the Academic Pipeline Leaks
Do Women’s Orgasms Function as a Masculinity Achievement for Men
Orgasms have been promoted as symbols of sexual fulfillment for women, and have perhaps become the symbol of a woman's healthy sex life. However, some research has suggested that this focus on women's orgasms, though ostensibly for women, may actually serve men; but the mechanisms of this are unclear. In the present experiment, we hypothesized that women's orgasms specifically function as a masculinity achievement for men. To test this, we random…
Testosterone and Sexual Desire in Healthy Women and Men
When Orgasms Do Not Equal Pleasure
Defining Pleasure
Social neuroendocrinology
Gender/sex/ual diversity and biobehavioral research
The gender/sex 3×3
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by American Psychological Association in Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity on 24 February 2022, available online: https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000558
Gender/sex diversity beliefs
Prejudice against or affirmation of gender/sex minorities is often framed in terms of beliefs about the ontology of gender/sex (i.e., what gender/sex is), or gender/sex diversity beliefs. We constructed the Gender/Sex Diversity Beliefs Scale (GSDB) to assess ontological beliefs about the nature of gender/sex, including essentialist and social constructionist beliefs, and validated the GSDB across a series of studies. In Study 1 ( N = 304), we exp…
Individual variation in gender/sex category definitions
Feminist Identity in Men
Newborn bio/logics and US legal requirements for changing gender/sex designations on state identity documents
Legal enactments are de facto definitions of gender/sex and affect the day-to-day lives of trans-identified individuals. We assessed requirements for changing gender/sex designations on US driver's licenses and birth certificates alongside their potential foundations to explore these legal definitions. Analyses showed that surgico-medical authority and sex reassignment surgery were privileged over lived experiences, psychology, and physiology (e.…
Measurement of Testosterone in Human Sexuality Research
Descriptive Experiences and Sexual vs. Nurturant Aspects of Cuddling between Adult Romantic Partners
Sexual Harassment in the Field of Sexuality Research
Sexual Thoughts
Average Associations Between Sexual Desire, Testosterone, and Stress in Women and Men Over Time
Sexual and Gender Diversity Among Sexual and Gender/Sex Majorities
Recent research on gender and sexual majority individuals suggests that their attractions, identities, and experiences may not be as homogenous or easily generalizable as is often assumed. Sexual configurations theory (SCT; van Anders, 2015) is a framework for conceptualizing individuals' partnered sexualities and gender/sexes with a focus on gender/sex and sexual diversity. SCT has been successfully used in recent empirical work with gender and …
Gender/sex and sexual diversity via sexual configurations theory
Heterogeneity in Gender/Sex Sexualities
Sexuality research has generally privileged attractions based on partners' sexed physical bodies over attractions based on other features, including gender expression and personality traits. Gender may actually be quite central to sexual attractions. However, its role has received little empirical attention. To explore how gendered and sexed features, among others, are related to sexual attractions, the current study assessed how sexually diverse…
Sexual Desire in Sexual Minority and Majority Women and Men
Bio/Logics
This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, "Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies," revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; other…
Sexual Fantasies and Gender/Sex
Research links explicit sexuality (e.g., physical attraction and pleasure) to high testosterone (T) and nurturance (loving contact) to low T. Engaging in sexual fantasy, which can include explicit sexual and nurturant elements, increases T in women but not in men. We examined whether individual differences in the explicit sexual and nurturant content of fantasy were linked with T or with estradiol (E2). In addition, we explored whether fantasy co…
Visualizing gender/sex diversity via sexual configurations theory
Why the Academic Pipeline Leaks
Waist-to-Hip Ratio Is Positively Associated With Bioavailable Testosterone but Negatively Associated With Sexual Desire in Healthy Premenopausal Women
OBJECTIVE: We examined whether high waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) in women is a biomarker for increased testosterone (T) and higher levels of sexual desire. METHODS: Participants were 99 healthy nonobese premenopausal women. Trait levels of mean bioavailable T were estimated from three saliva samples collected at 8:00 am, 9:30 am, and 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm, controlling for phase of the menstrual cycle. Sexual desire was measured with the Sexual Desire In…
Menstrual cycle irregularities are associated with testosterone levels in healthy premenopausal women
High androgen levels have been associated with menstrual irregularities in clinical populations, but not in healthy women. We examined the association between testosterone and menstrual irregularities in a nonclinical population of 194 healthy premenopausal women, none of whom reported chronic health conditions. Women provided saliva samples for assay of salivary testosterone, and responded to questions about length of menstrual cycles, variabili…
Social neuroendocrinology
Grip strength and digit ratios are not correlated in women
Fink et al. (2006) have reported that men with higher grip strength (GS) have lower digit ratios (2D:4D), interpreting this as evidence for organizational effects of prenatal androgens on strength. In this study, I attempted to replicate their finding with 99 women. I found no evidence that digit ratios were associated with GS, suggesting that 2D:4D is not associated with GS in women. The null findings are discussed in light of gender and statist…
Hormones and Human Partnering
Research on the associations between hormones and human partnering represents an exciting advance in understanding human behavior, relationships, and sexuality. We review empirical literature on circulating hormones and human partnering (i.e., pair bonding, sexual/romantic relationships, pairing). We begin by reviewing steroids (e.g., androgens, estrogens, cortisol) and peptides (e.g., oxytocin, vasopressin). We then move on to androgen-partnerin…
Gonadal steroids and salivary IgA in healthy young women and men
Empirical evidence from clinical, nonhuman animal, and in vitro studies point to links between immune function and gonadal steroids, including potential androgenic immunosuppression and estrogenic immunoenhancement. This study was designed to test links between steroids and one marker of mucosal humoral immunity—immunoglobulin A (IgA) in healthy individuals, to facilitate comparisons with other species and clinical populations, as there are few e…
The Steroid/Peptide Theory of Social Bonds
The First Feminist Sex Research Reception at the International Academy of Sex Research
Testosterone and Sexual Desire in Healthy Women and Men
Sexual Thoughts
Nomenclature and knowledge-culture, or, we don’t call semen ‘penile mucous’
Science reflects cultural practices and also occurs within them, and this ‘knowledge-culture’ is constituted by the public imaginary (general understandings and perceptions of phenomena) and the ‘scientific imaginary’ (the ability to envision scientific questions, methods, meanings and material possibilities for studying phenomena). In this feminist science laboratory case study, I argue that nomenclature contributes to epistemologies of ignoranc…
Sexual Fantasies and Gender/Sex
Research links explicit sexuality (e.g., physical attraction and pleasure) to high testosterone (T) and nurturance (loving contact) to low T. Engaging in sexual fantasy, which can include explicit sexual and nurturant elements, increases T in women but not in men. We examined whether individual differences in the explicit sexual and nurturant content of fantasy were linked with T or with estradiol (E2). In addition, we explored whether fantasy co…
Beyond “Oxytocin = Good”
Descriptive Experiences and Sexual vs. Nurturant Aspects of Cuddling between Adult Romantic Partners
Newborn bio/logics and US legal requirements for changing gender/sex designations on state identity documents
Legal enactments are de facto definitions of gender/sex and affect the day-to-day lives of trans-identified individuals. We assessed requirements for changing gender/sex designations on US driver's licenses and birth certificates alongside their potential foundations to explore these legal definitions. Analyses showed that surgico-medical authority and sex reassignment surgery were privileged over lived experiences, psychology, and physiology (e.…
Measurement of Testosterone in Human Sexuality Research
Bio/Logics
This section includes eighty-six short original essays commissioned for the inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Written by emerging academics, community-based writers, and senior scholars, each essay in this special issue, "Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First-Century Transgender Studies," revolves around a particular keyword or concept. Some contributions focus on a concept central to transgender studies; other…
Social Neuroendocrine Approaches to Relationships
Social neuroendocrinology is the study of social behaviors and hormones, using ultimate (evolutionary) and proximate (mechanistic) considerations, alongside social context. In this entry, two scholars from psychology and anthropology focus on social relationships (e.g., parenting, romantic relationships, sexual contacts) and both peptide (e.g., oxytocin, vasopressin) and steroid hormones (e.g., testosterone, estradiol, cortisol). Basic theoretica…
Polyamory, monoamory, and sexual fluidity
Beyond Sexual Orientation
Welcome to the 2016 Annual Review of Sex Research
I am pleased to present the 2016 ANNUAL REVIEW OF SEX RESEARCH (ARSR) as my inaugural issue as editor. The previous editor, Jacques Van Lankveld, did an impressive job building on and growing ARSR’
Identification with Stimuli Moderates Women’s Affective and Testosterone Responses to Self-Chosen Erotica
Defining Pleasure
Gender/sex and sexual diversity via sexual configurations theory
Psychology (61 works) · Social Psychology (46 works) · Sociology (39 works) · Developmental psychology (36 works) · Gender Studies (36 works) · Human sexuality (33 works) · Medicine (29 works) · Sexual behavior (25 works) · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology (22 works) · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy (21 works)