Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Able-Mindedness was coined by Allison Kafer and Robert McRuer to serve as a related concept to compulsory heterosexuality, coined by Adrienne Rich. Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Able-Mindedness is the idea that societal rhetoric and expectations, rooted in ableism, classify able-bodied and able-minded individuals as "normal". This classification leads to society enforcing adhering to normal body functions on people, and to disabled people feeling obligated to expend energy and stretch their capabilities so they can be perceived as more "normal."

Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Able-Mindedness

Disability as fluid refers to the phenomenon, that is especially acute in individuals with dynamic disabilities, where disability, and whether one is perceived as disabled, is constantly in flux based on whether an individual has disclosed disability, experience of symptoms, and whether they are being perceived as disabled by those around them. Disability as fluid refuses compulsory able-bodied and able-mindedness by destabilizing an abled/disabled binary, and acknowledging that shifting needs and capabilities does not undermine a lived experience of disability.

Disability as Fluid

Crip theory challenges the binary associations of viewing non-disabled individuals as independent and disabled people as dependent, and the societal frameworks that place value on indepence. Mingus in the piece "Forced intimacy: An ableist norm" argues that Crip Theory challenges this binary by having a greater focus on interdependence.

Interdependence as Challenging Binary Associations

Crip Time is a term coined by Ellen Samuels, Allison Kafer, and Margaret Price to explain how disabled or crip bodymind embodiments often have different experiences with time. In particular Samuels, Kafer, and Price pose crip time as an alternative framing of time to counter how disabled individuals often have to place great strains on their bodyminds to meet nondisabled timetables - meet deadlines, be seen as at a similar stage of life to nondisabled peers, work similar 9-5 positions. These timelines fail to understand why disabled bodies' experiences may not be able to nicely fit these expectations. Crip time offers a temporal framing that makes the clock fit the disabled bodymind rather than making the disabled bodymind fit the clock.

Crip Time

1. Compulsory Able-bodiedness and able-mindedness
2. Disability as fluid
3. Interdependence
4. Crip Time

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Like Queer Theory, Crip Theory seeks to destabilize definitions of who and what are normal. This effort to destabilize for both comes from how disabled people have been pathologized in medicine. The normal Crip Theory seeks to destabilize is an illusory normal of a perfect body image, health, and body function.

Crip Theory and the Conceptualization of the Normal

Abrams, E. J., Floyd, C. E., & Abes, E. S. (2024). Prioritizing Crip Futures: Applying Crip Theory to Create Accessible Academic Experiences in Higher Education. Disability Studies Quarterly, 43(4). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v43i4.8270

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