Nanaimo mother banned from school after social media post

A Nanaimo mother has been banned from her child’s school after refusing to delete a social media post criticizing a teacher’s progress pride flag shirt.

Source: Bryony Dixon

A Nanaimo mother has been banned from her child’s school after refusing to delete a social media post criticizing a teacher’s progress pride flag shirt.

On the first day of school, Bryony Dixon posted on Facebook objecting to a teacher wearing a progress pride flag t-shirt. While the original pride flag was a symbol of gay rights, the progress pride flag is a symbol of intersectional social justice, a movement which has been linked to violence in the past.

Dixon made the post just days after a mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, where the 23-year-old trans identified gunman opened fire, killing two children and injuring dozens before taking their own life.

The next day, Nanaimo Ladysmith School District 68 sent Dixon a letter ordering her to remove the Facebook post. The district wrote that it considered her post “disrespectful to the staff member who was photographed,” adding that “bullying and harassment (including sexual harassment) in any form [is] totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

The letter concluded, “On behalf of the District I am directing you to remove the offensive post. I also direct you to cease inappropriate posting of the images or comments with respect to the gender identity of our staff in the future.”

Dixon declined to remove it. “You must cease and desist indoctrinating students with quasi religious belief systems, and listen to the valid concerns of your district’s well-informed parents,” she shot back in an email posted on X.

In an interview with True North, Dixon said that her post did not single out an identifiable staff member. “It could have been any teacher that’s got a protected gender identity,” she said. “I didn’t say it was a specific teacher. Nothing was identifying a person. The picture was very blurry.”

The following day, the school district served Dixon with an exclusion order barring her from school property. The letter stated that her post “links violence in the United States with an identifiable photo of a staff member,” which they said placed the staff member at risk of violence.

The order cited administrative procedures which permit principals or superintendents to exclude individuals if their presence is considered a safety risk or disruption.

Amy Hamm, a former BC nurse dismissed following women’s sex-based rights activism, wrote that the school district was “threatening” a mother for criticizing a progress pride flag shirt, calling the flag “a highly controversial political/pseudo-religious belief system” that doesn’t belong in schools.

BC House leader of OneBC Tara Armstrong posted that “A BC School Board wants to BAN a kindergartener’s mom,” and asked education minister Lisa Beare whether the board should be replaced. Interim leader of OneBC Dallas Brodie echoed Armstrong’s comment urging the education minister to replace the school board.

A screenshot of a social media post AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Dixon said the school district had already been monitoring her online activity. She pointed to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request showing staff discussing her social media activity. “One of the things that they said was, ‘Bryony is making posts on Facebook. We need to get [staff member] to search her Facebook page. She’s good at this kind of thing. Let’s look for a legal liability,’” Dixon said.

She linked the dispute to earlier conflicts with the school board. “One of the trustees has already defamed me when I did an event with Megan Murphy and Mia Hughes and Linda Blade,” Dixon said, citing what she described as a pattern of targeting.

True North requested comment from Nanaimo Ladysmith School District 68 regarding the exclusion order, but they did not respond. The district has not issued a public statement on the matter as of publication.