There's two types of situations that make for ''cringe'' material, I think - those like us, who practice an alternative lifestyle others view as weird, and those people who just have little respect for themselves or those around them. When it comes to unusual but harmless things, like ab/dl, we should practice live and let live, allowing people to do their own thing, but unfortunately human beings tend to be a judgmental race that fears what is different. As for the latter group, I think it's more OK to cringe at people blatantly ignoring the standards of society - for example, a person changing their baby's diaper in the middle of a restaurant, or a person who wears dirty clothes by choice.
I'm not so sure we need outright ab/dl activism - I do think, however, that it would be beneficial for people to change their attitudes about weirdness and differing sexual practices in general. Whether or not this is possible on a grand scale, I don't know. Perhaps people are genetically programmed in a way to resist difference and see it as ''bad'', as unconducive to our survival as a species. That anyone displaying such traits must not be completely right in the head and unable to function as a normal human being. We ab/dl's, after all, seem to be going completely against what we're supposed to do: we're supposed to grow up, act like adults, and take our places in society. That's how the world functions and keeps going.
Of course, in the end, we use our brains to reason and see that ab/dl or other weirdnesses and kinks are really no big deal in the grand scheme of things. While it would be nice if everyone could do the same, I think it's only to be expected that we will encounter people who do not accept or even quite tolerate these differences. The best we can probably do is to surround ourselves with people who look past our oddnesses and see the person underneath. Life's too short to worry too much about what others think of us.