In defence of Cassandra Cain

There's been criticism of Cassandra Cain going around recently.  In Of Course She Is, Kalinara points out the many stereotypes that come together in Cassandra Cain, and in Batgirl's Creepy, Johanna takes exception to how Batgirl is portrayed in art.

Cassandra Cain presents a lot of problematic stereotypes. I won't pretend she doesn't.  She's part of a long tradition of Asian characters who just happen to be preternaturally talented martial artists.  She's silenced, both effectively by her late acquisition of human language, and symbolically by the mask stitched over her mouth.  She's the only member of the immediate bat-team who isn't white, and co-incidentally the only member whose costume covers them so completely that neither hair nor skin-tone can be observed.

When Johanna takes exception to the "head on a stick" presentation of Batgirl, she's objecting specifically to the highly styleized Batgirl portrayed by Damion Scott.  This style emphasized hands, feet, and head, none of which are sexual characteristics, and in Batgirl's case, all of which are her means of communicating.  Scott's "drawing style is influenced by the graffiti art and the Hip hop culture," (wikipedia) and because of Scott's long tenure on the title, is the one most strongly associated with Cassandra Cain. 

However, Batgirl as drawn by Leonardi, on left, shows that the costume can just as easily be drawn as perhaps one of the least sexualized costumes available to women in the DCU, and without stylistic deformities.  Here, she looks like Batman, but female.

Cassandra Cain as Batgirl also can be seen as the appropriation of the bat-legacy by and for women.  Although she's under Batman's supervision and paranoid direction, Cassandra considers herself the successor to Barbara, and the costume is not of Batman's design, but Helena Bertinelli's.

JLG1 says:

"And to be honest, one thing I didn't like that could be argued to fit that fantasy was Batgirl's muteness and brain "unlocked" by a guy, using his telepathy to stick his way of communication to understand her."

But I'd like to suggest another reading.  Cassandra was silenced by a man, her father, and had speech forced on her by another man, a deus ex machina who barely lasts the length of the story-line.  But neither is satisfactory: her muteness was isolating, and the acquisition of speech was debilitating.  It's only the intervention of Shiva, a woman, which allows Cassandra to interact with the world the way that she wants to.

Cassandra's journey can be seen as one from uncritical acceptance of authority to asserting her own individuality.  In the beginning, Cassandra frustrates Barbara with her blind trust in Batman.  In the end, while Cassandra is still Batgirl, it is because she shares goals, not because she follows a person.

Because of Cassandra's abilities as a fighter, a major source of drama was removed from the writers' repertoire; Whether she would win fights was rarely in doubt.  Instead, writers were forced to rely on conflict from within: Cassandra, finding her place in the world, grappling with ethical problems, and learning who she was.  Luckily, the book had several strong writers who managed this creditably, but in the hands of weaker writers, Cassandra could easily become a cliché.

However, having seen her written well, I know it can be done.

As an aside: while Rivkah Greulich's Batgirl art is gorgeous, I'm particularly uneasy with any suggestion that Cass needs to be replaced with a blonde batgirl.  One of the less discussed effects of the DC's most recent "crisis" has been to remove almost all characters of colour from Gotham, or to severely reduce their visibility.