LibDem MP blocking my emails?! Am I a GC terrorist?!

[DoLibDemsHateWomen]

NC as I don't want to out myself. Sorry the below is a bit long and rambling but wanted to set out the full picture.

My MP is Lib Dem Deputy Leader Daisy Cooper (who I think I share with the Great Maya Forstater, Hallowed Be Her Name!).

I was a big fan of Daisy - I campaigned for her in the general election partly because she seems decent and hardworking, and party because our Tory incumbent was a waste of space. Only subsequently I have I become GC and realised to my great disappointment that the LibDems stance of TWAW is massively problematic

At the beginning of June, I sent Daisy a pro-forma email via the Women's Rights Network, concerning the fact that women who try to raise legitimate concerns about single sex spaces are being accused of extremism or even called "terrorists". I have pasted the email below, and the report it attached can be found here. I gave my hotmail as the account to which to respond.

I subsequently sent a couple of longer emails which I drafted - one setting out the problems caused by the LibDems' TWAW stance (male bodied people being moved to women's prisons, being allowed in women's and girls' changing rooms, the ghosting of a woman raped by a TW on a women's ward who was told she couldn't have been raped because there were no men on the ward, rape victims being forced to share support groups with TW etc etc), and then a separate one detailing concerns about the NHS's erasure of the word 'woman' from pages on eg ovarian cancer. All very measured (even though TRAs would no doubt have deemed it all literal violence🙄), making clear I think trans people should be treated with dignity and respect but inclusion should not mean throwing women under the bus. I asked Daisy to confirm what her position/policy was in relation to these issues.

After a few weeks I'd heard nothing, so I tried sending a chaser, but this time I got a bounce back from her email account, but the message did seem to go through to her chief of staff who I copied this time. I wondered if it was blocked because my message contained words like "rape" in it. I also tried messaging her using DM on Twitter, and posting a message on her facebook page, again all very measured, just saying disappointed I've not heard from you but not going into any detail.

I therefore decided to print all my previous messages and scan them as a PDF, so that if my messages had being blocked due to the language used, the email filters wouldn't pick it up in PDF form.

This time the message bounced back both from Daisy and her chief of staff.

Hmmm. That's odd, I thought.

So I tried sending exactly the same message and PDF attachment from a different email account, and this time it all went through, to Daisy and her chief of staff! I had the standard automated response acknowledging receipt.

So, AIBU (not that I'm posting it there) to think that Daisy has blocked me, her constituent (and former supporter!) completely?! Is she so captured (and so ignorant of the Forstater Employment Tribunal decisions!!!) that she feels justified in shutting me down completely? If so, is this not effing outrageous?! (bit of a rhetorical question, that last one).

I genuinely did no more than ask her to confirm her position on these policy areas, pointing out the practical issues caused by the TWAW stance. The only other email contact I have had with her office was some very productive exchanges during the pandemic where I made suggestions (which her office acted on) on how to improve lockdown homeschooling provision for disadvantaged children, so if she has blocked me it can only be because of the below.

I'm going to give it another couple of weeks then try chasing from the new email account. If that's now blocked I will raise it with WRN and also look at whether I can complain about Daisy for disenfranchising me as her constituent.

Slightly ironic that in response to me asking her if she thinks women expressing (legally protected!!!!) GC views are terrorists, she seems to have treated me as if I was an actual, er, terrorist!

Just needed to vent really. And shine some sunlight.

Women's Rights Network - text of email sent to Daisy.
The right of women to single-sex spaces is under attack and the debate is being closed down by every means possible, and frequently by attacking the motivation and character of those trying to defend women’s hard-won rights.
People – usually women – defending single-sex spaces are increasingly called “extremists” or even “terrorists” and accused of being “radicalised”, with all the security concerns associated with those labels being invoked.
The recent Council of Europe report, describing UK women as “virulent bigots”, has sadly added to this hyperbole.
A rebuttal of these attacks and an analysis of the dangers they bring has been made in a short report “Transphobia As A Security Concern – The Dangers of Conflating Political Speech with Violent Insurrection” published on 10th January 2022 by Fair Cop in collaboration with the Women’s Rights Network.
Please find a copy of the report here
A PDF is also attached for your convenience – I very much hope you will be able to find the time to read it.
Please can you respond with your views on this, and reassurance that you do not regard me, your constituent, as a terrorist because of my views on women.
Thank you

Thought I was beyond being shocked by how captured politicians from parties not in power are but this is appalling. MPs are supposed to act for all their constituents not just those whose political views are aligned

That is awful. It’s what these people are like.

Sorry, only first thoughts, hopefully someone else will confirm this might be a good idea. I'd a) send a chaser, but cc Liz Truss, as Secretary of State with responsibilities for women's equality, her office has not blocked you and might pick this up through the inbox b) check out Parliamentary Standards Committee, they may have a recourse when your MP is refusing to engage, I'd say cc Liz Truss's office too in correspondence, to ensure early flags. Name your email snappily but catchily. Collate correspondence and blocking confirmation to use in correspondence.

Also, perhaps contact Sex Matters or Legal Feminists, off Twitter I should imagine, for further/much better advice.

Good luck OP, our MPs should NOT discriminate against their constituents on the basis of the legally protected views (thank you Maya!)

Why not send it to her in the form of a registered ‘signed for’ letter, with an s,a.e inside?

I'd just send it in normal post with a covering letter to begin with saying that you'd tried to email but there seemed to be some issue with it getting through, so in addition to getting a reply you'd like them to check the settings on their mail software to ensure that messages from constituents like yourself aren't getting mislaid. Because it could just be a technical glitch rather than a deliberate blocking.

If you don't hear back from that in a timely manner, then go for the registered post. I wouldn't worry about the SAE as they claim the postage on expenses.

Sadly a lot of politicians are captured. Being out of their depth with the gender debate they end up towing the party line. A few years ago I wrote letters to my Labour MP. I was originally quite hopeful, aware he was well respected in his role. However his responses demonstrated limited grasp of issues/facts, with zero questioning and that was it for me, he had completely lost my vote. I went from being Labour through and through to being a floating voter actively avoiding Labour. When the new conservative Mp took over I wrote to her, outlining worries about legislation and gender and didn’t hear back. I suspect she had more of an understanding of gender issues but lacked the courage to discuss the issue.

One sure-fire way to change the way you vote is to engage with your local MP on a matter close to your heart, assuming you have voted for them before. I assume my MP Chris Grayling has blocked me but I've not put it to the test (he's not on Twitter as far as I know but he'd block me on that if he could). We consulted him about Mum in a care home and social services' machinations - they saw me as a whistleblower and were out to get us, it's not unlikely Chris Grayling was onside with that and using our meetings as surveillance - he's not denied it. She was lucky to get out of that care home in his constituency alive.

MPs are not exactly powerful. The State is powerful - and the only MPs who are, are those who align themselves with the State - the State being a weird collusion of local Councils, local police, regulators and sometimes charities all covering for each other, and viewing everyone else as the Muggles. It's quite cult-like imo.

Not sure why a Lib Dem MP would need to be consulted on issues such as this unless such a conversation was already up their alley. It is a hot potato subject, they'd probably have more to lose than to gain.
Blocking seems a bit extreme however, possibly the words you mentioned flag things up and it happens automatically?

Personally I would file a GDPR with her office (www.daisycooper.org.uk/privacy). MP's are bound by GDPR, make her office put in writing why they've blocked your email address and if they've put you on any kind of block list I would request rectification. If they try to claim its just an auto thing well you have a right not to be subject to automatic profiling under Art 22

Sorry that link didn't work www.daisycooper.org.uk/privacy

Also as shes blocked your email address from her parliament account and her data protection officer address is her parliament account (absolutely shockingly sloppy from a DPO perspective). If you wanted to be ornery, you could send the GDPR request to the listed email in her privacy policy and when it bounces back file a complaint with the ICO straight away.

Print it out and walk to the office anx hand it in in person. They cannot refuse to talk to you. That is disgraceful. Do not let this go.

I’d be sufficiently pissed off to snail mail a letter with proof of delivery.

And I like@miri1985 ’s suggestion of a subject access request. I don’t fully understand how that works but it sounds like she does. Worth trying!

My server rejects hotmail addresses and sometimes yahoo too so I don't receive those emails. Doesn't explain the lack of response from social media though.

I thought that MPs had to accept emails from constituents. I know it's meant to be a difficult (and major) part of their assistants' job to read through many offensive emails, including death threats, and decide if any of them represent a threat to their safety. Given this is the case, how could they justify blocking a polite email from you, even if they disagree with the content?

The wording on the House of Commons website seems to imply that MPs are expected to reply to correspondence from constituents.

www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/#jump3

Did you put your postal address on the email? I have contacted my MP a couple of times and put my address to show I was a constituent.

A few years ago there was an MP who refused to reply to emails, only actual letters. I see some posters have suggested sending an actual letter. I'd do this for something where I really wanted a reply from my MP too.

My only other suggestion is have you thought about contacting They Work For You to see if they have ever heard of MPs blocking constituents, apart from on social media?

Not sure what happened there - the link got cut off:

www.theyworkforyou.com/help/

Pretty sure there is no such thing as "filing a GDPR". You can ask to know the information that they hold on you, you can ask for that information to be changed or deleted, but you can't just ask them any question and say "you have to tell me because of GDPR". It's only about data protection.

With thanks for @miri1985 's suggestion, what she means is to file a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) with Daisy Cooper's office. The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the European legislation which still forms the backdrop to many of our data protection rights including DSARs, along with the Data Protection Act 2018. Kicking myself that doing a DSAR didn't occur to me as I do know a bit about them through my work, but I will definitely submit a request.

However, someone commented on the separate thread about LibDems and the LGBAlliance as follows:

"I wrote to them asking about baroness Featherstone saying that feminists were not welcome in the party if they were GC - they literally terminated my direct debit and sent me a "sorry you're leaving" email even though I never said I wanted to leave."

As such, it seems the LibDems may be quite unashamed about their ostracising, silencing and disenfranchising of anyone who dares to express a GC view. Which is particularly interesting given the EAT and ET decisions in Forstater v CGD Europe, as surely this is unlawful discrimination and akin to cutting off anyone who is, eg, disabled, or a Muslim! Hardly very liberal, or democratic!

The Subject Access Request is all very well, and try it - it gives them 40 calendar days to respond. Most public bodies - Surrey County Council for instance - have a bit of fun with this. They don't care about fines - they're rich - and will hope the person loses interest or dies in the interim, maybe timing their response for the week before Christmas when they'll be distracted. An MP may try to avoid doing this because being known about makes them more vulnerable to exposure in the local press.

I delayed sending off an SAR because I could never quite get the hang of the idea that you could just make an organisation hand over info - how can you tell if they have? And if you find something discriminating, on photocopied paper, how can you prove it came from them and that you didn't just type it out and insert it yourself?

On top of all this, while the Information Commissioner's Office is not as obviously venal and nasty as other public bodies, it's not too trustworthy either and has little in the way of teeth so often public bodies just have a laugh with it, they can not bother meeting the deadlines and they don't get fined anyway so nothing to lose.

Not sure why you have to go down this path, but then I say that having been down this path myself - on behalf of my late mother - so who am I to talk? But it can be a frustrating and unrewarding experience, you often find out you've been shat on but there's not a lot you can do about it. Exceptions to that can exist actually, if you've been maligned you can correct the record - the State goes by the view that anything put in writing is 'true' unless contradicted and if you don't know about it, obv you can't contradict it... So yes, sometimes it's best to know. But this applies with stuff like Social Services where they build a case against a person on the quiet then hit them with it.