Pearl Davis’ “hottest” take is that divorce laws are skewed in America and men should not get married because the majority of today’s women are evil, deceitful, and not marriage material. While these views are provoking, like many of her claims, they simply aren’t true.
If you don’t know Davis, she describes herself as conservative, an “anti-feminist,” and the “female Andrew Tate” and has more than 400,000 followers on X and almost 2 million subscribers on YouTube. She rose to fame on TikTok due to a series on evaluating relationships.
Her outrageous clickbait content mostly focuses on the state of marriage and divorce in America and her many judgments against modern women. Here is one of many examples of her nonsense:
Let’s debunk her three worst takes.
Claim: Women Are More Likely to Abuse or Murder Their Children than Men Are
This one is certainly puzzling because years of data has been consistent for decades that men commit more violent crimes than women. Among countless studies showing this, in 2009 the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics found that of infant homicides, 75 percent involved beating or shaking by a caretaker, and 83 percent of those were perpetrated by men, such as the infant’s father or the boyfriend of the infant’s mother. In cases of sexual abuse, males are the perpetrators in 88 percent of the sexual abuse claims that Child Protective Services substantiates.
In a few videos, Pearl mentions studies that showcase how women abuse more children than men. The problem? More women are caring for children than men. The right question to ask is, are women more likely to be violent with their children?
Because women are more likely to care for and have access to children, there is more data on the subject potentially skewing research and public understanding. A 2004 study of the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) found, “Until the past decade, child welfare research primarily focused on mothers of maltreated children rather than fathers.”
The study found that “Of the 192,321 unique perpetrators in the data set, 89,028 (46%) were male and 103,293 (54%) were female” even though men are much less likely to be around children.
The office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention conducted a study in 2001 detailing homicides of children and youth in America and found, “In general, women kill much less frequently than men.” Male perpetrators outnumber female perpetrators in cases of homicides of young children, 58 percent to 42 percent.
It is misleading and downright dishonest of Davis to claim that women are more likely to be abusive than men are.
Claim: Women Are More Likely to Engage in Harmful Behavior than Men
It’s true that many facets of modern womanhood and feminism are detrimental to society. But to say empirically that women are somehow more evil than men is to ignore realities such as that men consistently commit more crime than women and biologically men are more prone to violence because of testosterone. In truth, the average man is just as sinful as the average woman.
While this is not an argument of which sex is “better,” Davis forgets the historical significance women have and still play in upholding a moralistic society. Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote about how women have a great moral power over men, and this is one part of what keeps marriages and families strong. Women are more likely to donate money and give in higher amounts and are more likely to be religious.
Davis’ argument is that virtually all modern women have rejected morality and have failed society, and religious women are no different. In fact, she even goes so far as to claim that women are worse when religious: “many men see it as a red flag — women that are religious — because the quality is just so much lower.”
While Davis claims to be Catholic and religious, she rejects the basic principles of Catholicism and Christianity. Sin is not a result of women; sin is the result of both men and women choosing to reject God and embrace prideful decisions. Of course there are some women who go to church and don’t live moral lives. But there are also plenty of traditional Christian women who live each and every day striving to serve Christ and their families.
If Davis truly wants to see modern women reject immorality, then the best option is to push them to church, to encourage them to seek Christian community, and to pursue Christ with their whole heart. Claiming women are worse than men misses the fact that we both have problems and neither of us as a group is better than the other.
Claim: Marriage Is Bad for Men and Men Shouldn’t Get Married
While Davis gains followers and clicks, she leads men and women down a damaging path with the idea that marriage is a failed institution.
Marriage and family are the bedrock of society. There are countless benefits to marriage: When children are raised in a two-parent household, they are more likely to be successful; married religious women are happier; and married religious couples report the highest sexual satisfaction.
Additionally, married men with children are the happiest men in society. As the Institute for Family Studies reports, “married men (ages 18-55) in America are about twice as likely to be very happy, compared to their unmarried peers.” Discouraging men from the one thing most likely to bring them happiness is deceitful and ignorant at best.
While divorce is common in this country, it does not mean the institution of marriage has failed. Instead, this points to a greater need for religion. The lowest percentages of divorce are within religious communities.
It’s pretty obvious that Davis has created a red-pill persona for monetization. In fact, both her mother and sister are TikTok stars as well. It seems the whole family has found a niche to exploit. But the trouble comes when her harmful ideology affects the way men and women pursue their lives. Encouraging men to boycott marriage will only lead to their destruction, and spouting harmful notions about Christian women pushes an already immoral society further away from God.
As Christians consider Davis’ content, they should verify it against scripture — as it says in James 3:17, “The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere.”
If Davis truly desired for modern women to change and leave their sinful past, she should point them to Christ, not spew angry content falsely insinuating that all women are evil with no point of return. And if she wanted to change the divorce rates for men, she would encourage them to take their faith seriously, and find a spouse who does the same. But it’s clear Davis would rather spend her day click-baiting men than opening a Bible.
