Don't play a bait and switch... The song involved far more than a man who was "mean or cheating". The key passage is:
The points are a) he wouldn't/couldn't be stopped by the legal system, and b) he just about killed her, and that likely wasn't going to be the last time.Well it wasn't two weeks After she got married that Wanda started gettin' abused She put on dark glasses and long sleeved blouses And make up to cover a bruise Well she finally got the nerve to file for divorce She let the law take it from there But Earl walked right through that restraining order And put her in intensive care
Perhaps you see it as just a "lib thing" that the women in the story took things into their own hands, but I can assure you that there are many cases where similar circumstances led some man (brother, father, friend, etc.) close to the abused party to do likewise, either outright "disappearing" the guy, or at least visiting him with a carload of burly friends carrying baseball bats to "convince" the animal to leave town, and fast.
And the times that they've been caught doing so, the "he needed killin'" defense has rung a strong chord with many juries.
If you don't think that's classic Texan (or "country" in general), you haven't been around here much. And while I don't listen to a great deal of C&W, I've heard enough to know that such a tale would fight right in to the oeuvre, and I'd be amazed if there weren't already several songs out along that theme. So for the aggrieved women to do the honors instead of the "menfolk" isn't really much of a stretch.