How it really is:

"I've made the unbreakable fucking vow and now I'll die because of Harry fucking Potter?!?"

"Not TODAY"

also antis: Snape, as a student, deserved to be bullied

snape is introduced at a young age wearing a “women’s blouse”, which petunia uses to mock him

snape, when appearing to neville as a boggart, wears neville’s grandmother’s clothing when neville uses riddikilus on him

during “snape’s worst memory”, james turns snape (who he sees as a potential romantic rival) upside down and strips him/humiliates him in an attempt to impress lily, and after snape yells at lily and calls her a mudblood, lily covers up her (justifiably) hurt feelings by commenting on his dirty underwear

snape’s patronus, confirmed by jkr to be a symbol of “true love, love everlasting”, unlike james’ stag, mirrors lily’s patronus by being a doe (which much of the fandom considers to be a sign of obsession, despite never levelling the same accusations against tonks’ wolf patronus mirroring remus’)

most, if not all, of the significantly positive/grounding forces in severus’ life are women (eileen, lily, narcissa, mcgonagall) 

If you go by the freudian/jungian interpretation of the wand as a phallic symbol, Snape’s connection to the cauldron is a yonic/vulvic symbol.

there’s a lot of focus on snape’s looks - eg that his most recognizable trait is his hair, which seems odd to focus on

speaking of hair, his hair length

has to be “rescued” by james during the werewolf incident, and damsels are often seen as feminine

often described in ways more coded to the feminine 

it’s so interesting to me that these kinds of things get internalized to the point where most readers wouldn’t even necessarily pick up on them overtly. and yet, snape is in the traditional position a nonconforming male character often falls into - the bully, the bad guy, the evil person.stereotypes are often cast as a villain and it’s esp common for male villain characters to be androgynous. he’s done nothing worse than many of the other evil characters and yet it is is snape who is so thoroughly villified by fandom, snape who is the fandom punching bag.

and i do wonder if this underlying tension of snape’s gender and sexuality, that we recognize these nuances in snape’s performance of gender without necessarily evaluating them at a conscious level, contributes to that. that’s not to say that everyone who dislikes snape does so because of that, but just in a general sense of how snape is turned to as the paragon of evil in a book where characters like umbridge, the malfoys, voldemort, pettigrew etc all exist… it seems directed at him for a specific reason, somehow. not just that he’s done bad things, but a particular kind of loathing that seems much higher than demanded for the actual level of his crimes.

I don’t have anything major to add, just a few add-ons to points already raised.

-  To add to @prosnapeblogging‘s point about Freud/Jung and wands as a phallic symbol/cauldrons as vulvic…Snape dismissed ‘foolish wand waving’, and waxed lyrical about the cauldron instead.

-  To add to @severusdefender‘s point about cauldrons and cooking, it’s also that witches - as opposed to wizards - are traditionally depicted with a cauldron, and stirring pots.

-  Occlumency is a form of defense and because it isn’t attention-seeking or aggressive, it could be considered a more feminine role. Snape is so good at it that he fooled Voldemort, who is the most aggressive person in the entire series.

-  Snape is the one who is has to brew the Wolfsbane Potion for Lupin. Not Dumbledore, who is a supposedly genius in everything and has more free time on his hands. No, Snape has to take time away from his teaching schedule to make medicine for another person. And not just any person. One of his abusers. He is forced to maintain his abuser’s good health all year long and whenever he expresses concern over his abuser’s loyalties, he’s told he’s overreacting. That sounds so much like the female experience.

Has an essay for everything