I think we'd have a lot less bad takes about the way DC currently handles Barbara Gordon's disability if we were willing to admit that looking abled is far, far more important to abled people than actually being abled.

The reason DC is willing to give Babs chronic pain, a part-time cane, a (sorry excuse for) a backbrace, but not willing to let her be a full time wheelchair user is because if they made her a full time wheelchair user they wouldn't have the option to pretend she's abled. That's it. It's that simple.

To abled people, looking disabled is one of the worst things that can happen to you. This is why deaf kids are deprived of sign language. This is why blind people are deprived of white canes and braille. This is why people with mobility impairments are deprived of and discouraged to use mobility aids like canes, crutches, rollators, and wheelchairs. This is why prostheses with a focus on lifelike accuracy over practicality exist. Hell, it's not just true for physical disabilities: this is why the entire concept of masking exists.

Having an invisible disability brings unique challenges with it, yes, but also, you get fundamentally more baseline respect from abled people. I, as an autistic person who can pass as neurotypical near-perfectly, am treated infinitely better than an autistic person who is clearly and obviously autistic. That's why I go through the effort to pass in the first place. Those who pass are seen as human, at least at first glance. Those who don't, aren't. This same principle applies, arguably even more strongly, to people who are physically disabled.

Yes, this respect is heavily conditional. Yes, it hurts to acquire and maintain. Yes, there may come a point where it becomes impossible or not worth it to maintain. But let's not pretend like there's no reason invisibly disabled people often go to great lengths to ensure the disability remains invisible.

There is a chronic lack of disability rep in superhero comics; in fact, disability is probably the least represented minority in comics. When disability rep does appear, though, it usually comes in two flavours:

There is a reason for this. It's because abled people don't want to look at disabled people. They want to be able to ignore a disability, to forget or deny that it exists. They want to have the option of not acknowledging it.

DC does not want Barbara to be disabled. That much is obvious, considering how long it took – how much fighting it took, from fans and, undoubtedly, from individuals within the company – for them to acknowledge that getting shot in the spine might have consequences regardless of what magic chip they employ. DC wants Barbara Gordon to be abled, but a fully abled Barbara received just a little too much backlash to be worth it.

So they went with the next best thing. They made her invisibly disabled. Because looking disabled is worse than being disabled.

It doesn't matter whether an individual author or artist portrays the invisible disability well. Hell, it doesn't matter whether an individual author or artist decides to show her using a cane or even – gasp – a wheelchair. Because if another author or artist doesn't want to deal with it, they don't have to.

This is also, coincidentally, why Barbara's portrayal was often more openly ableist when she was paralyzed. Authors and artists were forced to deal with it, even when they clearly didn't want to. They couldn't erase it, so they had to attack it. Now, they can just pretend she isn't disabled, and if questioned on their portrayal, respond "she was having a good day".

That's why she's invisibly disabled: plausible deniability.

Look, I get we're all starved for rep. But, @ invisibly disabled people defending this choice because they feel represented: you're being used as a smoke screen to harm other disabled people, because the ableds believe you're more palatable and easier to deal with than them. Are you going to prove them right?