In an evocative exploration that challenges conventional medical paradigms, Ó.M. Murray’s forthcoming paper introduces a feminist queer crip lens to reimagine the gut’s role in health and identity. Moving beyond reductionist biomedical narratives that individualize and stigmatize non-normative bodies, Murray’s work calls for a radical reconceptualization of gut health. This approach destabilizes entrenched ideas about “normality” in bodily experiences, particularly relating to chronic conditions such as ulcerative colitis (UC) and surgical interventions like stomas. The paper urges the scientific and medical communities to consider the lived realities and multifaceted dimensions of “crip guts” — a term denoting bodies whose guts are marked by disability, dis-ease, and sociopolitical marginalization.
Central to Murray’s argument is the recognition that gut experiences are deeply interwoven with temporal dimensions and sociocultural histories. The gut does not merely respond to immediate physiological stimuli; it also “remembers” through layered temporalities. These include acute gut feelings reflective of immediate emotional or physical states, prolonged inflammation indicative of chronic stressors, and intergenerational legacies shaped by trauma, famine, and colonial violence. By situating gut conditions like Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) within these broader contextual frames, Murray foregrounds the importance of environmental and historical factors in understanding gut health — factors often neglected in Western biomedical discourses that prioritize genetic and microbial explanations.
This paper provocatively proposes that biomedical research and clinical practice must embrace interdisciplinarity to grasp the complexities of crip guts. Such an approach would draw from humanities, social sciences, queer theory, and disability studies to supplement biomedical knowledge. Instead of isolating gut conditions as purely individual pathologies, it contends that gut health must be approached holistically — accounting for socio-emotional, cultural, and political dimensions. Murray amplifies the voices of those living with stigmatized gut conditions, emphasizing the urgency of believing patient narratives to counteract late diagnoses, inadequate treatment, and insufficient mental health support endemic to many gut disorders.
A particularly poignant segment of the paper addresses the representation and experience of stomas. While medically lifesaving, stomas are frequently framed in discourse as the “unwanted future,” shrouded in stigma and invisibility. Such narratives isolate ostomates — individuals living with stomas — and obstruct the formation of communities rooted in solidarity and shared embodied experiences. Murray envisions a transformative concept: queer stoma pride. Rooted in queer and disability pride traditions, this collective reclaims stomas from negative framing and nurtures a communal identity that celebrates difference and bodily plurality.
Queer stoma pride challenges dominant societal perceptions that paint stomas as undesirable or repulsive. It fosters a neutral or even celebratory framing that distinguishes physiological realities from social attitudes, such as fear of stigma or societal pressure to “pass” as normal. By doing so, it challenges presumptions that patients universally desire to maintain a so-called “normal” body at all costs, instead encouraging acceptance and joyful affirmation of alternative bodily existences. This reframing is not merely symbolic but is framed as essential to overcoming epistemic injustice — the marginalization of experiential knowledge in favor of dominant medical narratives.
The activist and scholarly project of queer stoma pride also disrupts colonial, queerphobic, and ableist frameworks that valorize returning to “normal” as an inherently positive goal. Instead, it embraces “leakiness” and boundary disruption as radical acts that question fixed categories of embodiment. This means recursively acknowledging and celebrating what is often socially denigrated: bodily difference, fluidity, and unexpectedness. Murray’s paper foregrounds the politics of poop—a bodily function traditionally taboo in academic and clinical discourse — asserting its significance in decolonizing knowledge production and expanding conceptions of health and embodiment.
Importantly, the paper situates the gut at the crossroads of pain, oppression, and resilience, inviting a rethinking of how chronic bodily suffering intersects with structural violence. Gut conditions do not exist in isolation but are deeply embedded within social systems marked by discrimination and inequity. The gut’s “memory” becomes an archive of such histories, as scars of trauma and oppression manifest physiologically across generations. This perspective challenges biomedical reductionism and advocates for research agendas that are politically informed, respectful of lived experience, and inclusive of multiple epistemological frameworks.
Murray’s work pushes the boundaries of knowledge production by advocating for collective, relational epistemologies that value embodied experiential knowledge. Such knowledge is often dismissed or marginalized in favor of abstract clinical data, yet it is critical for comprehending the complexity of gut-related disabilities. The collective expertise of ostomates and those with disabling gut conditions could serve as powerful coalitional foundations to advocate for improved healthcare policies, mental health supports, and destigmatization campaigns.
In clinical practice, moving beyond biomedical frameworks means challenging deeply entrenched biases related to “normal” and “healthy” bodies. Physicians and researchers must cultivate sensitivity to the metaphorical and emotional complexity embedded in gut experiences. This includes acknowledging the messiness of chronic illness—the uncertainty, disruption, and ambiguity that patients navigate. Failure to do so perpetuates epistemic injustice, delays timely intervention, and exacerbates psychological distress.
The paper underscores the need for future research to probe beyond pathological models towards transformative understandings of healing. Healing, here, is conceived holistically as more than symptom management; it involves reclaiming pride, building communities, dismantling stigma, and embracing bodily diversity. The notion of healing is expanded to include collective empowerment and solidarity forged through alternative narratives of gut health and disability.
This paradigm shift also demands confronting the colonial legacies that shape both bodies and medical knowledge. Western biomedicine’s erasure of indigenous and subaltern ways of knowing contributes to epistemic exclusion and shapes biased clinical practices. By refusing to reproduce colonialist concepts of “normality” and “restoration,” queer stoma pride and a feminist queer crip approach offer radical alternatives that honor multiplicity and resistance.
In essence, Ó.M. Murray’s paper is a call-to-action for scientists, clinicians, activists, and communities to reconceive the gut as a site of intersectional embodiment—where biology, culture, history, and identity converge. It invites stakeholders to collaborate in producing expansive, nuanced understandings of disability, chronic illness, and bodily difference that transcend stigma and reductionism. The gut becomes a powerful lens for interrogating broader questions of justice, knowledge production, and the radical potential of queer and crip pride.
Navigating this complex terrain demands humility, openness, and the willingness to embrace epistemic diversity. It challenges the biomedical imperative to “fix” or “normalize” bodies by asking what it might mean to value and celebrate non-normativity. Such work sparks hope for a future where crip guts and stomas are not diminished or erased but are claimed as integral to vibrant, diverse, and joyful human experiences.
As conversations around chronic illness, disability, and queer embodiment intensify, this paper represents a transformative intervention. It bridges academic inquiry with activism, theory with lived reality, and medicine with ethics. Murray’s feminist queer crip approach disrupts dominant narratives and positions the gut as a dynamic organ of resistance, memory, and pride—inviting a radical reimagining of health sciences that could reverberate well beyond the gut.
Ó.M. Murray’s pioneering scholarship thus provides an inspiring blueprint for fostering inclusive, empathetic, and justice-oriented research and care. It highlights the urgency of elevating marginalized voices and honoring the multiplicity of bodily experiences to reshape not only gut health discourse but broader understandings of embodiment and human flourishing.
Subject of Research: Lived experiences of gut disability, stoma surgery, and the sociopolitical dimensions of gut health through a feminist queer crip lens.
Article Title: Crip guts, stomas, and the violence of ‘returning to normal’: a feminist queer crip approach to the gut.
Article References:
Murray, Ó.M. Crip guts, stomas, and the violence of ‘returning to normal’: a feminist queer crip approach to the gut. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 1780 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-06091-1
Image Credits: AI Generated
