Acceptance does not necessarily mean normalization (TW: adult/heavy topics ahead)

Some things should be accepted but NOT normalized. There's a difference. Example, one should accept the existence of safe BDSM because it's a matter of mutual adult consent. This doesn't mean it should be openly normalized though, instead just respected and left alone.

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Hell, even the majority of the BDSM community would agree they are not normal and that's okay. It's okay not to be normal, it's just a matter of whether you are harmful or not. Same could be said about certain subgenres of horror fiction, music genres, art and subcultures.

We live in an era with such a useless push to "be normal" that we begin to water down niche subcultures that were made to fight against normalcy to be more "normally" acceptable. A lot of times this directly contradicts the point of such subcultures.

Take the watering down of the punk subculture for example. A subculture built around breaking the foundation of social norms, shitting all over taboo topics like it's nothing, fighting against the cruelty of the political and economic climate and rebellion towards authoritarianism, is now getting a surge of artists within it directly contributing to what it's against, completely ignoring the philosophical foundations of the subculture and misinterpreting the concert etiquette for being "too extreme".

Another example I can give is BDSM. While it's completely fine how the kinks are becoming more popular, it's starting to become too popular to the point it's being watered down and in the community's words "vanillafied". The surface level of BDSM is so normalized that when the true essence of the sexual subculture is seen as extreme or offensive when the entire foundation of BDSM as a culture is the safe expression of trauma or pain through sexuality with strong focus on adult mutual consent and safety. Why else do you think they say "If he doesn't ask for a safeword, run for the hills"?

Now you see popular culture take parts of these subcultures as aesthetics which is fine if they didn't directly shit on the true origins of those subcultures in the process. It's like making a apple pie, and then getting screamed at by somebody who didn't like how the pie was filled with apples because they wanted only the crust.