I'm running out the door, and I do want to come back and more carefully absorb the first part of your comment - very, very interesting, excellent points.
As for the Barbara retcon, I could not possibly agree with you more. Perfectly said!
She wasn't all about not caring what Bruce thought because she did admire him for what he did--she just admired him as one adult to another.
Motto, motto, motto. I think they took away soooooo much of her power when they retconned younger that it just hurts. What's an easy way to depower an adult woman? Make her a child. It's really--maybe nobody else feels this way--but I believe it was a terribly sexist thing to do to her character and crueler to her than TKJ.
In the re-write it almost seems like now the writer's can only conceive of one way for a girl superhero to be: a young girl mouthing off to an older man. And then Batman has to spout stuff that sounds completely unnatural to him as a guy who grew up in a post-feminism world. As if you can only write a feminist character by having a bunch of big, older men tell a young girl she can't do stuff and have her do it anyway. Original Barbara had more important things to do in her mind.
Yes! I love that paragraph so much. That's exactly why it bothers me. And it also implies that there is only one kind of strong female character. Just one. An extension of 'all women are alike'. Yep. And here's the formula you use to write them.
Original Barbara had more important things to do in her mind. Yes:)!!!