Why Earl Didn’t Have to Die and Other Hard Truths about Perpetuating Oppression & Disempowerment
By: Hilary Booker
Tags: Social Justice, Music, Feminism, Personal Development, Wellness

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Some Background

I’m a Dixie Chicks fan for life. I loved the Dixie Chicks before I even liked country music. They embodied so much of what I stood for — they even had short blonde spikey hair like I did when I first encountered them. I admire them because they push the envelope socially and politically and don’t seem to care about what anyone thinks. I can think of very little that draws me to a person, place or group more than the ability and willingness to use creative practice as a means of putting a message out into the world that’s bigger than they are — whether I agree with the message or not. I self-identify as a recovering critical theorist. This means that I’ve spent too many hours of my life slicing, dicing and critiquing the so-called political messages and ramifications of all kinds of media.

I’m re-entering my outward political life after a several-year hiatus completing a doctoral dissertation, creating an institute and, most importantly, moving through an inward political revolution — the one that every effective political revolutionary embarks upon and, ultimately perhaps, the only one that really matters. While part of me wants to release my political training altogether, I couldn’t if I tried because I come out of the womb with my fist raised. Even if I could, in this moment of great opportunity for change, it would be irresponsible to throw away my most important and expensive skills because I just didn’t feel like transforming myself, yet again. Though articulated in different ways throughout my life, the only mission I’ve ever had, be it ever so humble, is the complete liberation of the planet. With a mission like that, there are no excuses at all, especially “not feeling like it”.

I believe in being more curious than critical. And yet, my training and extensive practice in critical theorizing offers me a unique creative process that, when executed properly, has the potential to catalyze deep personal and cultural reflection, to offer a route into creative practice, to facilitate deep transformation for those engaged in the process and to connect people from diverse communities, backgrounds and geographies that might not otherwise find themselves in a power balance. There’s a difference between critiquing and being critical. Being critical means always finding the negative, always looking for the imbalance. A critique is an assessment — good and bad, right and wrong, all possibilities laid out on the table. It’s the same as the fearless moral inventory that is familiar to anyone who’s worked through the 12 steps.

So even though my own perspective has, in some ways, taken a 180-degree turn towards being appreciative, 180 degree turns happen on straight lines. So I see this as an axis, a continuum. I am no longer critical, but I value deeply how the process of critique can catalyze and facilitate the inner political revolution — aka the healing journey, the hero’s journey, the awakening, moving into consciousness, getting woke, etc. I am just as reflective as always, but now I have chosen to turn my reflection inward. That is, I engage in the same method, but I connect constantly my observations of the outside world to what is happening with my inside world. You see, the liberation of the world requires the complete balance of power — the elimination of the oppressor and the oppressed. Equally, if not more importantly, the idea that there is always an oppressor and an oppressed, that the world is divided into the haves and the have nots, that the world is divided into the colonized and the colonizers must die. The inconvenient truth about this most radical idea is that it means that my capacity for healing on the outside is proportionate only to what I am willing to heal and take responsibility for inside of myself.

On that note, I return to the Dixie Chicks and a reflection that I imagine might resonate with a few people — especially those who are gung-ho about social justice, equity, feminism and gender equality. And it starts with “Goodbye Earl”. To be clear — I use creative practices for my own healing and my coaching practice clients every day. It is our natural inclination as beings on this planet to use our creativity to transform matter and energy into new matter and energy. So your favorite remix is someone’s evolutionary obligation. I have plenty of my own songs and poems that could be included on a compilation right next to “Goodbye Earl” and I will still sing it with gusto anytime it comes on so this article is not about the song, but about my reaction to the song and how it illuminates a relationship to the personal healing journey and broader ideas and work surrounding feminism and gender equity.

Why Earl Didn’t Have to Die — and what DOES have to die

If you’re unfamiliar, you can listen to the song HERE. It describes two best friends who take different paths in life. Maryann goes out to take on the world and Wanda stays in the town where they grew up and marries an abusive boyfriend. Wanda covers her bruises with makeup and suffers along. Eventually, she ends up in intensive care and Maryann returns, supposedly to “save the day” like a badass and help drive Earl away “Cause Earl had to die.” Earl disappears without clear explanation (though there’s a reference to some black-eyed peas) and Maryann leaves her other life so that she and her friend can start a farm together.

The song was criticized with, perhaps, the feminist version of “all lives matter” because, what sort of outrage would emerge if a male group wrote, recorded and performed a song about how a female partner (regardless of whether or not she’s abusive) “had to die”?

I wonder how many people reading this, like me, cheered Earl’s mystery disappearance following the meal with the black-eyed peas. Because, of course, any good friend and any good feminist would leave the life she created behind to save the day, would save her friend from the husband (that terrible abusive man) that she returned to of her own free will and would move back to the town she left to live with her friend for the rest of her life and make Strawberry Jam … right?

I bring this up not to undermine relationship violence and abuse or to blame victims of abuse. This is not to diminish the effects that millenia of patriarchal conditioning have on people of every sexual and gender identity daily, but to shed light on how that very conditioning penetrates the psyche and disempowers it. I bring this up because I realized that my long-term response to it until, seriously, only a couple of weeks ago, in many ways, perpetuates the very inequality and disempowerment that I claim to oppose. I bring it up because of how my response illuminates my own subconscious beliefs about gender and relationships that, quite honestly, I don’t want to admit still exist in my psyche at this point, beliefs that are counter to all I’ve worked hard to cultivate in my belief garden over the past several years … beliefs like:

· Revenge is ok (especially for women in heterosexual relationships)

· Women in heterosexual relationships are powerless or hold less power than their male counterparts and maintaining a defensive posture helps balance the power dynamic

· Women’s only power in heterosexual relationships is violence and counter-violence (be it physical, emotional, verbal, or any other form)

· Wanda is a victim who doesn’t have to be held accountable for returning to an abusive husband or for suffering along

· Wanda isn’t responsible, after a certain period of time, for setting boundaries or walking away, for allowing her husband to steal the energy she was given to find her destiny and live it out in the world or for working through whatever childhood/family/life issues probably caused her to end up and stay with him in the first place

· Maryann is responsible for “saving” Wanda

· Being a “good” friend (or a “good” whatever — partner, sibling, parent, child, person) means stopping or changing your life at the drop of a hat and “saving” someone else who’s “in trouble” (again) based on their own choices — whether they asked for your help or not.

Earl didn’t have to die, but these beliefs sure do. Earl needed rehabilitation — and so did Wanda. And it’s so clear to me how these beliefs have been weeds choking out the gorgeous flowers I’ve been trying to cultivate in my mental garden. It demonstrates that sometimes I focus so much on what I want to grow, that I sometimes neglect letting go and getting rid of what’s really getting in the way of what I want. As a grower, I know how critical weeding is. I forget (or, perhaps, choose to ignore) that all living things, people and beliefs (even I) need space to grow — physically, emotionally and spiritually. Weeds are what you don’t want to grow, anything taking up space and energy from what you DO want to grow. They need to be harvested and returned to the soil so that they can be transformed into a fertile growing medium for whatever it is you want to cultivate.

Tomorrow, I can’t wait to share what I’m actually cultivating in my psychic garden and how I’m harvesting and using these beliefs I don’t want (psychic weeds) to increase the fertility of my psychic soil and bring in more of what I DO want.

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