Quick to Condemn. Quick to Defend.
Controversy erupting on social media in Marshfield, Plainfield and at Twinfield Union School spilled over into the Plainfield select board meeting last week, generating calls to town officials, school officials and the Vermont State Police.
The swirl of activity came about because someone saw a now deleted website announcing a MAP Camp, where MAP refers to “Minor Attracted Person,” who most might refer to as a pedophile. The rebranding is apparently an attempt to normalize the condition; procuring rights now afforded people of color and LGBTQIA+ individuals.
The rabbit hole I’ve gone down with this story has been deep and often unpleasant.
In my role as the Gazette’s editor I regularly find myself researching things I wouldn’t otherwise be looking into because it’s important our stories accurately report facts. It’s not always easy to confirm what we’ve heard or read. When there’s doubt about something, we leave it out or move it to the opinion pages, though even there try to catch obvious factual errors and misstatements.
Nothing about MAP Camp, in what anyone has shared in social media posts, other media or official statements, has accused anyone of actual illegal activity, including even the failure to report a previous criminal conviction that would require public reporting of their location to the Vermont Sex Offender Registry.
Curiously, buried in the archived mapcamp.net website are some rather strange, self-critical comments in a Risks, Rules and Requirements section where noted risks include: “Exposure to pedophiles and other weirdos;” “Meals made communally by untrained volunteers of disgusting pedophiles (who hopefully wash their disgusting hands);” “. . . tripping because you were distracted by a sexy minor instead of watching where you were going” and “. . . no sexy children around to look at (a common problem when hiking).”
While only the website’s creator can say for sure what its intent was, the above statements seem unlikely to have been written by someone describing themselves with the term MAP or organizing a gathering for self-identifying MAP persons.
A statement indicating, “The campground is a woman-owned business run by People of Color out of their adjacent home,” gets the first part right in the connection made to the Onion River Campground’s owner, but the campground is not run by people of color.
Nothing directly connects that website with the Onion River Campground and I suspect it’s likely nothing ever did, except in the mind of those coming across it before it was deleted.
Beyond that, some statements there about the risks of travel seem just plain humorous; “Sickness from catching a cold in a bus, train, or airplane” and “Having to sit next to a normie on a long bus, train, or plane ride,” further help confirm my suspicion that the web site was intended as a joke at best, a hoax, or, at worst, perhaps a targeted attack on some campground’s owner or others who may visit there.
My evaluation of the situation is that it was much ado about nothing, with some seeming to overreact and condemn others without any real basis in fact, while some have defended the actions of others, also without a complete picture of the facts.
Even so, other good seems to have come of this, including opportunities for community dialogue, possible fencing to divide the campus from the campground and school plans to post signage about school boundaries and public use of its campus.
There may be lessons to be learned by all of us, as I suspect most of us can find within ourselves times when we are quick to condemn and others where we’re quick to defend.
Paul Fixx, editor
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
