Visibly Queer: Body Technologies and Sexual Politics

To me, SM always seemed perverse.
Not in the normative sense like sex has to be a certain way or heteronormativity must dominate,
but masochism, especially for the sake of sexual gratification, confused me.
I thought it was purely about the physical, primitive and animalistic.
I never once considered its political implications, or its use for community building.
So, according to norms, straight women bond through cooking, salon gossip, talking about boys.
Straight men bond through athletics and video games.
GLBT bond through branding each other?
Alright, yes, I understand that the point is to stray from the norm.
But by trying sooo hard to stray from the norm, aren't you just giving it more power?

In my opinion, people should do what they want to do (to some extent) and disregard if it fits into a norm or not.
Purposefully following the norm or purposefully breaking it, either way you're giving it more power.

In the instance of Mark and Shawn, it seems to me that Shawn originally did not want to do SM, but he felt like he needed to in order to fit into a "non-normative norm."
I may be wrong, it is possible that he would have wanted to do SM had he been exposed to it.
It just appears to me that a culture obsessed with tearing down the norm is just as bad as a culture obsessed with the norm, because they're both obsessed with it, and both forming norms of their own, in a sense.

It seems like a pointless battle.
Identity, and the search for it, are not pointless.
But building your identity off of a norm, in either direction, will only lead to the creation of conflict and new norms.