I want to emphasize that when I say Bruce's actions have normalized violence between him and Dick, I mean he has shaped their relationship such that Dick believes that it is acceptable for them to use violence against each other. The "each other" is very important here.
It would be one thing if Dick believed it was acceptable for Bruce to use violence against him. Maybe he would view it as punishment, or something he deserves because he keeps messing up. Something that he has to prevent by being good enough. Or that it's somehow Bruce's "right" to hit him.
But I don't think that's really what's going on, at least in Post-Crisis and beyond (in early Pre-Crisis, I think it's pretty clearly just values dissonance on parenting). Because we also see Dick using violence against Bruce, and just...I don't know, seeing it as totally fine and normal? And I think this is part of why Dick just isn't going to view himself as victim, or think he's been abused by Bruce. He does kind of flip-flop on whether they're equals or not, as well as whether he believes Bruce thinks they're equals, but I think this very much fits with the whole "[Bruce] wanted so bad for us to be partners. Even though he knew we'd never be equals" from Nightwing (1996) #15. Like, Dick may not view them as equals, but he does view this as a partnership, and he views Bruce as wanting it to be a partnership. So when Bruce acts violently towards him (such is early pre-crisis, NTT #55, Batman/Scarecrow: Year One if you want to include future retcon comics, etc.)...Dick doesn't view this as teaching "Bruce can use violence against me." Instead, his takeaway is "Bruce and I can use violence towards each other." Which makes Dick view it as two-sided and equal and fair.
I've talked about this normalization of violence between them with Batman #600, where Dick starts a physical fight with Bruce to get Bruce to stop ignoring him and destroying his own life, but something Dick says at the end of the Court of Owls arc sticks out to me:
Everything about this incident is jarring. From the punch coming out of nowhere, to Dick kinda just rolling with it, to Dick announcing that he'll be punching Bruce at some point (and Bruce then kinda just rolling with that). It's the...equivalency, I guess. Like, "oh, you punched me? yeah, okay, and I'll just punch you back and then we're even". They're joking about it. Neither of them sees anything wrong with this. And yeah, I...do think Dick actually does intend to punch Bruce here. Like, that is very much in-character for him.
Anyway, I just wanted to emphasize that Dick very much seems to view this as a two-way street. That doesn't change the power dynamics here. That also doesn't change the fact that Bruce was the one to introduce this violence. But it does affect Dick's view of the situation and the way he acts. If you told him Bruce was abusive, he'd deny it, but if you somehow convinced him, he'd conclude that he was also abusing Bruce. And also, I think this probably affects how Bruce views things. It's not "I can hit Dick, he deserves to be hit." It's not even, "I can hit Dick, he gives as good as he gets so it's okay." It's "Dick and I can hit each other. That's just the kind of relationship we have." And I do think that's part of why he does this again and again and never seems to realize that he's abusive. With Jason, he's dealing with a criminal. With the others, it's isolated incidents. But with Dick, it seems mutual to him. And therefore, okay. Never mind that he's the reason things turned out this way.
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