I can't also help but say that I think original Babs would be a lot more of a match for Bruce no matter how dickish a writer felt he had to make him. She was an adult who expected to be treated like one. In this version she seems to relate to men more like an adolescent, which she almost still is.
Original Babs WAS a respected partner.
as if the writer needed Bruce to be a dick but just that he couldn't really conceive of Babs as originally written.
I've been rereading Original Babs, and here's what it seems like to me: the writer read every gosh darn it, I'm a girl and I can still do stuff! Babs!stories of 1967-1970 or something. (Of which there were a few. Not an overwhelming number of moments, but they were there.) Then he skipped the parts where she was a grown woman.
But this particular story is written like it's still 1967. With institutionalized sexism that's unfightable and even unapproachable and a female hero constantly trying to prove that she's okay. Because, you know, she's female. And in the intervening years--1967 to 2003, we readers haven't come across any female heroes or anything. It's like the Simpsons "I'm a girl!" quote. IMO.