What???
The Snapewives and the ancient examples of the Bona Dea scandal and the Bacchic Conspiracy are linked more than one might expect. As mentioned previously, the women involved in the Bona Dea festival and the Bacchic Conspiracy would have been heavily policed in their day-to-day lives, meaning these religious groups would have been a reprieve from the structure of the public. The thing that joins these two groups is that they both have been pushed out of the public forum, resulting in these fringe groups. The group is then deemed by that very same public forum to be “dangerous”, or “cringe” – meaning that they are operating too far out of the “norm” to be accepted by the majority. In the case of the Snape Wives, we can see how these messages are then internalized and reinforced by authority figures within the groups. We have no idea how these power structures operated within the ranks of the Bacchic cult, as preserved viewpoints of ancient women are few and far between. In order to understand how these dialogues are internalized by the members of these fringe groups, we have to rely on the Snapewives. In a few of the surviving blog posts, we can derive the emotions that were leading these women into this community, and what they gained from it.
In this post on Rose’s blog, we are introduced to two more individuals: TJ, who is probably her child, and Kevin, her husband. We hear her stress about managing a household, and see her express frustration at both her husband and her weight. She says explicitly that she is “bored and depressed”. Still, she mentions the Hogwarts t-shirt she is creating, and does not mention feeling unhappy or expresses disappointment with it.
Speaking from my own personal experience, fandom can be a point of escape from stress or even just the monotony of daily life. And at least on the surface level, there is no barrier to entry. All you need is a demonstrated passion for the title.
I’d like to move us back to a post from Snapemaniac/Tonya that I quoted in the first section of this piece.
Snapemaniac: Making pictures of Severus is an obsession. But I can only make them if he is with me. He has helped me make a lot of pictures, over the past 5 years.
As mentioned previously, much of what has been preserved of the Snapewives is the most scandalous, the most “outrageous” of their posts. We are missing the mundane blog posts that would give us a sense of the positive aspects of this space. But in this quote from Tonya, we can see how her involvement with the Snapewives empowered her to create.
And these women were free to do that privately, at least until “Fandom_Wank” pulled down the curtain on the Snapewives, subjecting them to widespread ridicule that has continued for around twenty years, even after the community is no longer active.
I am not saying that the Snapewives are without sin – as mentioned previously, there was questionable behavior throughout the community and a lot of problematic in-fighting. But prior to them being forced into public discourse, this was a tightly-knit community of older women finding meaning together. It is possible that this community (and Severus Snape) was giving them something that their offline lives were not fulfilling. After all, fandom and pop culture titles are typically not targeted towards older women. I would propose that the Snapewives were forcefully making space for themselves and interpreting pop culture in a way that worked for them.
This behavior continues today. For further research, I point you towards the 2020’s-era TikTok trend of “shifting” and “Draco-Tok”, in which primarily teenage girls (though people of all ages, backgrounds, and demographics got involved) engaged in meditation-like rituals in order to “shift realities” and move their consciousness into the Harry Potter universe. Often, this was to be with a character romantically, most usually Draco Malfoy. Soon, this behavior spread to other fandoms as well, though Harry Potter was always the most popular. And these individuals all shared the same worldview: something in this life was missing, something they believed that they could find within these titles they love so much.
The Snapewives are an interesting corner of internet history. A group of middle aged women worshipping their communal husband, Severus Snape, on the astral plane sounds unbelievable and yes, even comedic. But the Snapewives can also provide insight into the lived experiences of women who have been pushed out of the public forum, causing them to find solace in these fringe groups. All three women mentioned in this piece have since spoken openly (and dare I say, proudly) about their involvement in this group. Clearly, it was something real and special to them until they were revealed to the public.
The Snapewives, the Bona Dea scandal, and the Bacchic Conspiracy speak to a long trend of the systemic repression of the ways that women are encouraged, or to a certain extent “permitted”, to participate in public expression and communication – and then how that participation is endlessly scrutinized. As seen in the Bona Dea scandal and the Bacchic Conspiracy, patriarchal structures view women as a “corruptive” force and then seek to limit how men can interact with them. This creates a compounding effect, where women are forced into women-only spaces, which in turn creates anxiety in the men. Yet as soon as these groups are created, patriarchal structures critique them further. The experience of the Snapewives illustrates how these patriarchal structures can then be recreated in these groups, now with the women in the shoes of the oppressor – a position they could not have filled outside of the group. This recreation of patriarchal structures, alongside the endless vitriol from outside groups, are what led to the eventual downfall of the Snapewives.
Part of the integral structure of the Snapewives was their initial ability to remain private, given the way that LiveJournal only allowed users to access spaces by directly searching for them. Today’s social media practices make that difficult, as algorithms constantly bring “outsiders” into the folds of fandom, making the smallest fandom “faux-pas” (i.e. a mediocre-quality fan art) ripe for widespread cyberbullying. Still, semi-public messaging apps such as Discord (a popular application amongst “shifters”) create opportunities for these private communities to live on, albeit harder to join by those not already in the community. With the upcoming reboot of the Harry Potter series, it is totally possible that the Snapewives will be revived. But if they do, I encourage you to just let them do their thing. Or even take an unbreakable vow and join them. I don’t judge!
