nb hickey hc... tell me more
scream ok well thanks for asking. I really love putting a nonbinary/genderqueer spin on Hickey, most often in a specifically bigender way, for a bunch of reasons some of which are the ways doing that expands on some of the meta stuff going on with him as character
The Terror is doing some intentionally queer things with gender: male characters do things usually reserved for female characters, and occasionally the writing borrows from generally female archetypes to construct them. As I've seen a lot of people observe, this is most obvious with Hickey. An antagonist whose main method of operation is manipulation through charm and flattery - either with flirtatious undertones or overt flirtation, who is significantly younger then the lead and generally disempowered, whose increasing villainy is motivated in part by experiencing some kind of sexual or sexualized brutalization - usually this character would be a (quite misogynistically written) woman. Of course, there's also quite a lot of characterization important manhood to Hickey - he deeply resents his position and wants to be traditionally powerful, a leader of men; he specifically wants to be Captain Crozier.
There's also his relationship to Gibson, in which he is firmly taking on the role of the man to Gibson's woman. We get a little bit of this early on when they have a spat over Gibson denying his desires and agency in their relationship, when Hickey mockingly refers to Gibson as his wife. While this is pretty clearly Hickey being catty I do think he's right that Gibson desires to take on (and does take on) a feminine role, which being penetrated is a part of but not the full extent. Look at the only scene we get to see them being affectionate and romantic in - Hickey slips a ring onto Gibson's finger while Gibson blushes and smiles, invoking both engagement and a bride and groom at an alter. There's real tragedy in this scene, of two people who must conduct their entire relationship in upmost secret under fear of torture playing out public displays of devotion they'll never get to actually indulge in, but also an interesting bit of playing roles. I do think that, despite the practical function of convincing Gibson to spy for him, Hickey is also operating from a place of genuine affection. Even so, the way he does this is not totally unlike the way he interacts with those he lacks affection for and purely wants something from; he takes on a role he knows will appeal to Gibson.
Which brings me to the role Hickey takes on in that context, which is implicitly seductive and, given his status, motivations, and where he is, I'd say is also implicitly feminine. Like I've said, Hickey's main (or at least first) approach to getting what he wants out of a man, which he attempts often, is generally to try to charm him. This carries a flirtatious tone, and is generally directed at a man with power over him. After all, those are the men who have the most to give. I've posted before about how Hickey's sexuality being an open secret (which it must at least be among the officers, given that Des Voeux, who isn't even stationed on Terror, knows about it) would, in the all male environment of the Navy, prime him to be viewed as sexually available and potentially sexually convenient, and that this could be taken as implying that his (varyingly effective) attempts at charm don't just resemble flirtation but are flirtation. This is relevant because Hickey playing into the perception of himself as sexually available/convenient to try to derive benefit from that perception wouldn't just be part of the narrative using generally female archetypes to construct Hickey, but also Hickey as a character playing a feminine role; presenting himself as willing and able to act as (a temporary replacement for) a woman.
This calls to mind a lot of interesting historical conceptions of homosexuals/inverts/what-have-you as separate and distinct from men (which still persist to a certain degree today and likely always will - gender and sexuality are not neatly separated categories), and the heterosexual identifying men who had sex with them. Although the popularity of most of these conceptions post date the setting of The Terror by a few decades, I wouldn't entirely write off their relevance, given The Terror is after all a television drama from 2018 that's obviously hugely influenced by many things from after the Franklin Expedition.
On a related note, Jean Genet, whose writing influenced Adam Nagaitis' performance, draws a distinction between men, boys and inverts (an ‘invert’ meaning, to oversimplify things, a queer person as explained by a model of queerness that linked same sex attraction to a general and inherent reversal of gendered traits) in The Thief's Journal, and argues that boys and inverts are actually more possessing of masculine virtues, or at least masculine action, then men "In a gang [...] the young boys and inverts are the ones who show boldness. They are the instigators of dangerous jobs. They play the role of the fecundating sting". There's a lot more to be said, I'm sure, about the really fascinating ways Genet handles gender and how that may have influenced Nagaitis' performance, but I am not smart or well read enough to say much of it! So I'll have to move on instead.
There's another feminine role Hickey seeks to step into, which is his own conception of Silna's role as, as he puts it, a witch. In seeking to step into what he imagines her role to be - Tuunbaq's mistress - he not only seeks to become an image constructed from racist conceptions but misogynistic conceptions as well. While I was at first hesitant to integrate this into a genderqueer reading, particularly a transfeminine one, because of the ways it could resemble transphobic ideas about trans people, particularly trans women, as delusionally chasing a parody of gender, I do think to get there you would have to take an additional step from "wrong about the significance of their gender" (eg, that it might equip them to be a 'witch') to "wrong about what their gender is". Think about how many cis women get deeply into 'divine feminine' mysticism that hodgepodges together bastardized versions of religious/spiritual practices and beliefs of various marginalized groups. Nobody would ever think to imply that those women are not actually women because they're wrong about the significance of their gender and racist in their spiritual practices, and there's no good reason to treat any kind of trans person any differently.
Reading a gendered angle into Hickey's aim to bond with Tuunbaq also adds an aspect of mysticism to his gender, which is where things really start to get fun. In various patriarchal cultures, traits, abilities and domains are gendered either as male or female, with obviously 'male' getting the most valued traits and abilities. However, this does not mean that there is not also value ascribed to what is gendered female and considered the domain of women. Recurring under this kind of model is the idea that the ultimate possessor of power is a being who can possess both a man's ability and a woman's, who is both a man and a woman in one. The alchemical rebis, for example, the end result of the alchemical 'great work', is illustrated as a being with a male head alongside a female one, under a sun (symbolic of the masculine) and a moon (symbolic of the feminine).
This kind of model generally (although not always!) does not extend the view of a being possessing both markers of manhood and womanhood as holy and powerful to human beings - to quote Robert Knott's essay The Myth of the Androgyne "As an idea manifested by myth, or in initiation rites of transference, it was pure, a unifying principle; as a physical reality it was a monstrosity—something to be abhorred." - but there is a president for mystics integrating this model into their conceptions around their own gender. The most influential example is probably the Victorian occultist, cult leader and racist Aleister Crowley. Cards on the table I have not read a lot of his work, but I am aware it contains a reoccurring glorification of androgyny from a very male chauvinist and gender essentialist perspective. Years ago I did read a quotation from his autobiography (which he wrote in third person, lol) of him describing his gender and the significance he believed it to hold, which really stuck with me for the fascinating combination of misogyny, general regressive views on gender, and articulation of what we'd now think of as a transgender identity. I'm just going to include basically all of it despite it being an entire paragraph because it's really interesting and relevant to my bigender Hickey headcanon.
"But whereas, in most similar cases, the feminine qualities appear at the expense of manhood, in him they are added to a perfectly normal masculine type. The principal effect has been to enable him to understand the psychology of women, to look at any theory with comprehensive and impartial eyes, and to endow him with maternal instincts on spiritual planes. He has thus been able to beat the women he has met at their own game and emerge from the battle of sex triumphant and scatheless. He has been able to philosophize about nature from the standpoint of a complete human being; certain phenomena will always be unintelligible to men as such, others, to women as such. He, by being both at once, has been able to formulate a view of existence which combines the positive and the negative, the active and the passive, in a single identical equation."
Now, Crowley wrote this in the late 1920s, and was influenced by a 1920s milieu, where's Hickey is in the late 1840s, but what's some anachronism among friends? And besides, the belief that men and women are separate types of beings with separate abilities, and that someone who is both is very special and intelligent for it (and that this may have magical implications) would be conceivable for a person to hold in any period. Hickey is above all convinced of his own extraordinarily, that being different from his peers makes him better. A central part of his conviction of his own exemplariness is the pride he takes in his ability to adapt, to take on and discard varying roles (including explicitly masculine roles and implicitly feminine roles) as is convenient to him. He's also convinced of a very colonialist, English view of the world, a worldview which implicitly includes male chauvinism and while he is not as misogynistic as he is racist it's clear from the way he talks about Silna that he's both. The conception of gender articulated by Crowley here could easily hold a lot of appeal for him, it's not difficult to slightly tilt Hickey's pride in his difference and his pride in his ability to take on varying roles, his conviction that these things make him extraordinary, and get a character who also believes their ability to take on these roles comes from having a rare gender configuration, who is proud of being both a man and a woman in one.
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