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In November last year we looked at how many constituencies in the United Kingdom have EVER elected an MP who was not white or male.

The result was astonishing to some and not surprising in the slightest to others. To cut a long story short, most of the UK has only ever elected white men. Ever.

And here's what happened next

With the election approaching, we decided to tweet the article again - see if it could reach a new audience. The volume of responses we received was... unexpected:

Between retweets, favourites and Facebook shares and comments, we received over 1,000 responses.

You can basically summarise the responses like this:

We can't reply to everyone on Twitter, so consider this our collective reaction.

We decided not to identify the people that tweeted to us but we are quoting directly, including grammar mistakes.

1. White men should be in charge

"Surely that's a genetic thing that males are genetically more likely to go towards that role?"

2. It's "reverse racism"

"How strange... white people in their own country wanting to govern themselves"

A lot of people insisted that it's no surprise the country is governed by a white majority. While this may be true, it certainly does not apply to gender. 51% of the population is female, and only 23% of MPs are women.

"This comes across a bit reverse racist. It's not about the MP being white or not, it's about the people supporting an idea"

"Your racist ideology of white males is absolutely shocking"

"More white male bashing zzz"

"What a disgusting racist remark"

"Positive discrimination. I can only vote for ethnic minority females is that it?"

"Unbelievable that the white people insist on governing their own countries!"

"I know we don't live in a democracy but don't start blaming white men for black women's failure to engage in politics..."

3. But women don't WANT to be in power

"Your map just shows no black women wanted to be MPs perhaps. Maybe more should try to get elected perhaps. Your map is duff."

"How many women? and since colour means F all I don't see relevance"

"Could your map just indicate that black women ain't interested in politics on the whole or they just don't get votes...?"

"Why should a woman get a seat in parliament for merely having a vagina? What do transvestites count as?"

"Their are plenty of rich black women out there.."

"well if it's gender that concerns you why mention the ethnic issue? I'm male so what."

4. There's nothing wrong with the status quo

"Thats what the voting Citizens want"

"There is nothing to prove that certain people are favoured.."

...as long as the status quo happens to favour people like me, of course.

5. We're "not in a democracy"

I'm sorry, were you under the impression Parliament should be representative?

"OK you tell me what sort of state Britain is, be careful now or you could look stupid...its not a democracy."

"We live in a system that cares not what sex you are only how it can use you, it hates you it hates me..."

And here's what we think

Firstly, we acknowledge that not all responses were aggressive.

Some commenters raised a reasonable point: "You vote for party policies, not the candidates so why should their skin colour or gender matter?"

We can't speak for why people vote for certain people but we DO recognise that class, race, gender and sexuality has gotten in the way in the past.

For those who are not white, male, rich, and conform to traditional ideals, it's much more difficult to get a foothold in UK politics. We're looking at centuries of white, male-led politics.

We don't have a solution to that - we are simply reporting on the data we've found and we believe it should change.