He might see it as a ticket to relevance and power because without it, as just a gay black man engaging in drag with his background, he would not be given any kind of platform. In my area, there are a lot of queer/trans grifters with little to no education, job history, or skills who style themselves as activists and people only give them a platform, a seat on boards, or quote them in the news because of their trans identification and in many cases also their race because now that they style themselves as "trans women of color." It's been a plague on the local former gay rights' organizations, which are now experiencing both brain drain and hostile takeovers and really need to be replaced by new institutions. And the sad part is young black gay (largely male) youth are an especially vulnerable demographic here and they're getting left in the dust or transing. Not to mention they are entirely unhelped by the glamorizing of "sex work." Any time there is a death of a trans person it's always abundantly clear that it's a young, black homosexual male prostitute, though this is ambiguated in the narrative. And the articles always seem to manage to quote one of the trans grifters.