Trump backers celebrated death of this loving trans mother
Facebook trolls purporting to support president elect Donald Trump have ‘celebrated’ the death of a trans woman and mother of one.
Lizzy Waites, from Pierre, South Dakota, died by suicide last Wednesday after writing of severe loneliness and depression.
“I’m so sorry to all the people I hurt by killing myself. I truly am. I’ve been hurting so bad and I can’t form words to communicate it to you,” she wrote. “I’m so lonely.”
Ms Waites was mother to a five-year-old son, John, and had been with her partner Amanda for nine years.
A suicide note was scheduled to post on Facebook long enough after her suicide that nobody would be able to help her.
Her partner, Amanda, said that she had scheduled the post so people would know in enough time to care for her cat.
Now her Facebook account and note have been abused by vile trolls who have sent comments celebrating her death.
One user, on a fake Donald Trump profile, just wrote: “#TRANSLIVESDONTMATTER”
“Lol good riddance,” wrote a user with the fake name ‘Oi McVeigh’ with a profile picture of Donald Trump pointing and laughing.
“I am glad he is gone,” wrote a user named Jaroslav Tipek, who had changed his profile picture to a Photoshop of Lizzy’s face.
Lizzy’s name had been shared on a forum, from where transphobes found out about her, and her later death, to write vile comments across the internet.
The comments continued to be posted on her Facebook after death, while her partner was powerless to stop them.
Amanda did not have her deceased other half’s Facebook log-in details, and so ensued a frantic effort to get the page memorialised – which changes the rules on who can comment.
“You do not want that [Facebook comments] to be her last memory,” said Amanda.
Instead, Amanda says, she wants people to remember Lizzy as a ‘Renaissance woman’.
“She was good at everything she picked up.
“If she decided she wanted to learn Japanese, she’d learn Japanese.
“If she wanted to be a calligrapher, even though she had the world’s crappiest handwriting, give her a month. She was a calligrapher,” Amanda said.
“She had such a big heart. She wanted to take care of everyone and I feel like she knew too much, if that makes sense.”
