#to me orphan and black bat sweeping in the beginning indicates people really do view batgirl as a 'lesser' mantle

[casscainmainly]

Looking at the notes of that Cass name poll and I don't mind people preferring Black Bat for certain reasons, but saying 'Batgirl is not unique/her own name' is not a good argument to me. Yes, it's not unique; that's the whole point. It's a legacy mantle. The power comes from the fact that Cass is linked, through Batgirl, to the people she cares about most. For a girl who was forcefully isolated, who was denied a name (and therefore denied a legacy), Batgirl is the first thing that was ever hers. And Batgirl is not, and has never been, tied to Bruce; the point of the mantle is women carving out their own spaces, forging their own identities regardless of what others have tried to make them. Saying Batgirl is not a good mantle for Cass is also denying what she brought to the name - under Cass, Batgirl became a legacy mantle. Batgirl irrevocably changed her, and she irrevocably changed Batgirl. Preferring other names is completely fine, but it's important not to undermine what Batgirl meant, and continues to mean, to Cass.