#i had to format this twice because tumblr ate it ToT

[bleachbleachbleach]

Anniversary question!: how do you think soul society deals with disabilities (ie Tousen being blind or Kukaku missing an arm)? Is there a soul society ADA? What does it even mean for a soul to be disabled, and does it remain when they reincarnate?

I’m going to go ahead and broaden this from the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) to talk about whether or not Soul Society is likely to think equitably/accessibly about disability. 

Short answer: There can be no true disability justice when a society is structurally indebted to rule by war, genocide, and the uneven distribution of power.

But when has B3 ever left anything short? These are pretty unformed thoughts with lots of room for further consideration/greater nuance, but I’ve taken this ask as an invitation to do at least that first step.

13 Thoughts On Disability and the Gotei 13

(8 things that are garbage, and 5 with potential)

8 Things That are Garbage:

Authoritarian power structure

Narrow definitions of "valuable" expertise and experience

Disempowerment of minoritized communities

Pervasive culture of silence

Unsustainable work hours

Shitty meeting formats

Unimodal presentation style

Refusal to anticipate needs

5 Things with Potential:

Big doors

(Relative) openness to different ways of being

Plurality of care options (sort of)

Well-adjusted sense of liminality

Communities of care

8 Things That are Garbage

1. Authoritarian power structure: The nobility, the Gotei 13, and the Central 46 all exercise power in Soul Society, but for the average Joe Soul, rule by any of these entities is probably about the same—at the end of the day, it’s rule by the powerful. Authoritarian power tends to stigmatize difference, casting it as deviation, infidelity, and possibly ineptitude. The societies that authoritarian power produces then systematically benefit those in positions of power and their ability to stay in power (which tends to be at odds with sharing power, resources, expertise, time, etc. with those deemed different that therefore "marginal"). Examples: Execution being the penalty for Hollowfication/infection they didn’t even want. Execution also being the penalty for losing/lending one’s shinigami powers. The Den of Maggots existing. 

2. Narrow definitions of "valuable" expertise and experience: There are a few ways to become a captain, and each captain does tend to have their own special expertises, but the roster is not deep, and there are not many other ways to be upwardly mobile in Soul Society. Kaidou and kidou are *barely* honored as valuable skillsets, and that’s still just "shinigami stuff." This definition of what is/isn’t valuable lends itself to uphold the aforementioned authoritarian power structure, rather than actively seeking out different skills—of even non-skill-based ways of being—that might be valued.

3. Disempowerment of minoritized communities: I think the disabled population in even just the Gotei is minoritized, but I seriously doubt they are mathematically a minority. Untreated PTSD, anxiety, and depression are probably rampant (without the possibility of being diagnosed, since they lack that expertise), and the people who die of illness just die "of illness." Who knows what that is, or in what ways they may have been able to live longer or better. Shinigami probably have all kinds of weird things going on that they don’t take to the 4th, or that the 4th doesn’t have the capacity (either labor or knowledge) to handle effectively.

4. Pervasive culture of silence: If you don’t talk about it disability, then it doesn’t exist! Physical and mental illness, injury, body difference, neurodivergence, trauma… Heck, Aizen nearly destroyed them all and all the SC said was that the Aizen photobook would be out of print and several captains’ columns would be... "on hiatus." 

5. Unsustainable work hours: Shinigami are literally defined by the work they do. Reaping is their *purpose.* Forget a 4-day work week and <8-hour days. There’s probably not even a Shinigami Golden Week. And are captains ever not on duty, or at the very least, on call? Why is there no way to retire from the Gotei outside of death, banishment, imprisonment, being Kuchiki Ginrei, or whipping up a baller business proposal for a glasses shop? How does this culture (de-)value shinigami whose bodies cannot do this, or no longer desire to ask this of their bodies? What services to they offer to shinigami who (by their estimate) can no longer sustain an unsustainable practice (but can according to the needs of the Gotei)? THE DEN OF MAGGOTS?

6. Shitty meeting formats: To get less philosophical, you literally have to stand in two straight rows for sustained periods of time during a captain’s meeting. There’s no sitting, no vocalizing out of turn. You need to stim? That’d be a hard no. No backthroom breaks, either. When Ukitake is too ill, he doesn’t go and isn’t technically penalized, but he also doesn’t get a not-seat at the not-table. He doesn’t get the info, and doesn’t get a vote. (Or a chance to advocate his positions. Maybe no one gets a "vote," lol.)

[Chapter 081]

What might an accessible Captain’s Meeting look like instead? 

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Imagine:

Yamamoto opens with a quick check-in. This acknowledges the personhood of everyone in the room, even if the goal of the meeting is to assign labor. It also opens the flood to all voices, setting the tone for a meeting that is intended to be dialogic rather than unidirectional/top-down. 

He reminds everyone of their Community Agreements, which might include asking questions before acting on assumptions, naming perceived tensions in themselves or between others, or remembering to consider the positionalities from which everyone might be speaking. Yamamoto also invites people to move and use the room as needed to make themselves comfortable in the space.

Yamamoto’s role may be one of facilitator rather than sole speaker; the agenda has likely been set via group inputs, and different captains will have taken responsibility for different elements of the meeting to share these responsibilities/powers. He may see his role as Captain Commander as supporter rather than governor. What can he do to support the other Captains, identify potential collaborations, or share resources? How can captains correspondingly act in the same way for their devisions?

Not only are the captains in attendance, but there are probably representatives from other walks of Soul Society there as well, with either deliberative or voting power. Rukongai district reps, unseated officer reps, Seireitei civilian rep, Academy instructor rep… There may be issues-based reps for a given cycle, like from the SWA or the Shinigami Healing Circles committee.

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7. Unimodal presentation style: Yamamoto certainly isn’t breaking out the PowerPoint or using voice magnification to accommodate anyone with an auditory processing disorder. And if he did, he wouldn’t incorporate visual descriptions into his talk for the visually impaired. (And Hitsugaya probably can’t see shit from where he’s standing, sighted or not!)

If Yamamoto woke up one day and decided to run a Captain’s Meeting like this, it would not go well. They would all hate it, and nothing would get done. There might be a body count. But I think that what that speaks to, really, is the fact that they’ve been living within structures that have refused these possibilities entirely, and that they would have to do real, hard work to unlearn that.

These may also seem like very broad practices. What does this have to do with disability? There are two primary models of disability: medical and social. In the medical model, disability is to be cured or managed. In the social model, "problem" of disability exists in a society’s failure to serve someone’s needs. Which leads us to—

8. Refusal to Anticipate Needs: Any time a Captain’s Meeting gets called, it’s in reaction to something potentially deleterious to Soul Society as we know it. This is probably true all the way down, in the sense that the Gotei 13 tends not to anticipate needs. A village has to disappear, or someone has to die first. (Possibly a cultural effect of focusing on afterlives/afterwards.) But if you’re waiting for someone to tell you what is needed, then you’re reacting to a lack of something rather than try to build a reality that has accounted for that issue in the first place. 

5 Things with Potential

1. The doors to the Captain’s Meeting Room are very ADA-complaint.

[Chapter -108]

They are very wide, to accommodate for wheelchair users, and also open automatically, without the need for people to physically push them. (Except there aren’t wheelchairs, because THERE AREN’T WHEELS.) If you trust B3 enough to read this long textpost, then it probably does not surprise you that I have a folder filled with nothing but pictures of Soul Society’s doors, and I honestly think the 4th might be larger than other divisions’ doors. Maybe to accommodate for their diversity of guests?

2. The Gotei 13 seems reasonably open to different ways of being in the world, whether you are blind, deaf, chronically/terminally ill, or are a wolf. No one actually cared that Komamura was a wolf under that helmet, but he seemed concerned that they might, and I doubt he’d be concerned without justification. Ukitake also continues to be well-respected and isn’t asked to not be a Captain because he’s sick (even though it does actually change the ways he is able to do his job, and sometimes is acutely detrimental to being able to do that job well). No one ever seems to think Tousen or Atau wouldn’t be able to do their jobs because of their disabilities, but 1) that sentence again suggests that their ability to work is the most important thing here, 2) there are probably entire communities of deaf and blind people in Soul Society who aren’t "thriving" in Soul Society, either by labor-based or more personal measures, and 3) I don’t know that Tousen actually received accommodations for being blind, or that any of his colleagues actively thought about what practices might not serve him. The city is already unnavigable, and so much about people’s ranks/identities are tendered visually.

3. The fact that both the 4th and 12th both exist. What would the 12th possibly add to this? you might ask. They are creepy and weird. They ARE creepy and weird, but shinigami other than Mayuri do work there, and tbh despite the fact that Mayuri is objectively terrible, he probably also has relatively more progressive views on disability and body politics than many of his colleagues. But what I really mean goes back to the medical and social models of disability. For the most part, the 4th cures stuff. It tries to put you back the way you were. The 12th does, too, if you need some limbs back. But it’s more complex than that in both these places, probably, and I think the fact that neither have a pure monopoly on what medical care "should" look like, or what its goals should be, is ultimately good for the quality of medical care overall. (And probably pushes the 4th to continually improve the quality of its care and the ways care/health/illness might be conceived, either by acknowledging a valid perspective from the 12th or descrying something from the 12th as utter horseshit and vowing to be better.) It requires the 4th to have a care philosophy, and actively think about what they want that to be.

4. Given their line of work, both in terms of its focus on death and its hazardousness, I think shinigami probably have a better relationship to liminal states of being than most humans do. By that I mean they’re probably more on board with the idea that their bodies, in the state that they presently exist, are temporary. These bodies will change; their functions and abilities will change. 

Even though their lifespans may be way longer and the aging process less acute, and their whole real really being about stasis, I think this is one thing they do understand and accept: If you are not sick yet, you will be. If you are not hurt yet, you will be. There’s a dark edge to that, sure—in the sense that the Gotei really does not care if you live or die, or what your quality of life is. But it doesn’t have to be entirely fire and brimstone. A lot of that fire and brimstone feeling probably comes from systematic ableism in the first place. You can live the best and happiest most cared-for life and it will still be true that your body and mind (or bodymind) will change in ways that are difficult, painful, or make certain things no longer possible.

5. There are a lot of shinigami in Soul Society who will go to absolute town for each other. In spite of all the things working against this possibility, communities of care persist. This can be a problem sometimes when it comes to exercising boundaries and practicing self-care (you can’t help someone else if you’re killing yourself in the process), but ultimately, you have to care. You have to be able to assume that you care and the people around you care. 

And if there is one thing that the Gotei 13  has going for it, it’s that a lot of them really, really care.