A new update on the Will Porter manosphere controversy has just dropped, and it’s an apology video from Porter himself, directly addressing his comments and actions from a Jubilee video that broke the Internet.
Let’s recap
Will Porter (@sabl.boulangerie) grew popular earlier this year following the anticipated grand opening of his French-inspired boulangerie, SABLÉ. His bakery, which opened in his hometown of Gilbert, Arizona in May, drew hundreds of customers to line up to pay $35 for two pastries… and to see him. With women as his primary customer base, Porter — described by Phoenix New Times as “tall, fit and classically handsome” — was the main appeal of SABLÉ.
However, that all changed after appearing in a YouTube video titled “1 Anti-Manosphere vs 20 Manosphere,” posted on July 19 by a popular channel called Jubilee. The video featured relationship coach turned author Mark Manson as the singular anti-manosphere person surrounded by a circle of 20 manosphere-aligning individuals, one of them being Porter.
The manosphere — an ultraconservative network of digital media typically characterized by anti-feminist and misogynistic views — has its roots in the 1970s and 1980s as a movement against Second Wave Feminism.
In the video, Porter claimed that “women care more about looks than personality,” using the manosphere term of “sexual market value,” which is used in the manosphere to rank a person’s sexual attractiveness and value based on looks, wealth, and status — to defend his claim. He argued that women have a warped perception of dating because of Instagram and dating apps.
Additionally, he agreed with the opinion that manosphere figures such as Andrew Tate and Clavicular are positive influences — it’s safe to say that most people would disagree.
Check out this article for a full breakdown of the Will Porter controversy.
After the Jubilee video dropped, people had a lot to say. Most confused by his willingness to insult the very customer base that his bakery thrived off of.
The long-awaited apology video
Over a month after the Jubilee video debuted, Porter has finally posted a six-minute-long video on TikTok addressing his comments from the video.
He began his video with a disclaimer: “I have been advised by literally every single person in my life, including professionals, not to make this video, not to discuss these issues, and just to let things blow over naturally.”
“After sitting with this controversy for over a month, that just doesn’t feel right to me…I want to take the time to address my appearance in the video, take responsibility for some of the things I’ve said, and make some genuine apologies.”
In his video, he first provided context behind his appearance on the Jubilee video. He said that when Jubilee reached out to him to appear in the video, they told him that “the discussion would be about young men in America and that the manosphere would be discussed,” but that he was not informed that he would be shown as a “representative of the manosphere.”
“When I arrived, I quickly realized that I disagreed with almost everything being said by the other participants,” Porter said, referencing a clip from the end of the video where he said he didn’t want to be associated with any of the other manosphere-aligning individuals in the video.
He then began diving into the actual statements he made in the video.
The biggest statement he wanted to apologize for was his claim that “women care more about looks than personality.”
“I made my statement, my claim, intentionally provocative, and I regret that,” he said. “I do believe that how you look matters and it affects how people treat you… But where I went wrong is that I took [my] personal experience and I turned it into a sweeping statement about women that just isn’t true.”
He also brought up his statements about “modern women having far too many dates planned with men, and that Instagram and dating apps have given them sort of a warped perception of their options.”
He called these statements “completely unnecessary” and “speculative,” saying that he claimed this based on a few interactions he’d had with a small number of people. “I really had no business presenting [the statements] as if, uh, you know, it represented women generally, so I want to apologize for that.”
Porter interrupted the formal apology video with a close-up interjection, saying that his appearance gave people the impression that he didn’t respect women, and that he was an anti-feminist and misogynist.
“So many of the people that I’ve learned from, admired, and love in my life are women,” he said emphatically, claiming his love for how the women in his life have shaped him personally.
Porter then addressed how he agreed with Andrew Tate and Clavicular being positive influences on men, providing context for his actions.
He said that the Jubilee video was filmed at the beginning of April, and that he’d only been in the United States for about two months at that time after being overseas for years. At the time, most of what he had seen of Andrew Tate was “focused on self-improvement, entrepreneurship, working hard, mental toughness…things that [he] genuinely [believes] in.”
“When I was asked whether I thought he had a net positive effect on men, I raised my flag based on that limited exposure,” Porter continued. “Since then, I’ve learned a lot about his views, specifically about women, and also some very serious allegations against him that I was frankly unaware of at that time,” views that he claims he does not support. “I no longer believe he’s had a net positive impact on men.”
Clavicular was a similar story, as a figure Porter had resonated with after seeing clips of him talking about self-improvement and the benefits of looksmaxxing. “After [looking into the other messages Clavicular promotes], I realized I don’t agree with almost everything he has to say about women and dating and [drug use].”
“The bigger lesson for me is that I was speaking with much more confidence than I had knowledge,” he said. “I am not a sociologist. I’m a pastry chef. I’m not an expert on feminism, dating, the manosphere, and I shouldn’t have spoken as though I was.”
He said that at the time of filming the video, he had almost no audience at all. His bakery didn’t exist at the time, and he thought he could “go on some debate show and make a crazy claim…and probably nobody would care.”
He acknowledged the responsibility of being more thoughtful about the things he says publicly that comes with the public platform he now has.
Porter claimed that his intentions are not to apologize for as a business decision, but as a personal one: “I don’t like the person that I see in that video, I don’t like the way that I was speaking about women, and I don’t want that version of me to be the only version that people ever know.”
“I wanna give a more direct apology to all of the women who felt disrespected by my comments, and I’m sorry to the people who supported me, who felt disappointed when they saw the things that I had to say,” he said, claiming that he was speaking ignorantly on topics he had no authority to speak about.
He ended his video by saying, “I can’t undo what I said, but I can learn from it. I can take responsibility for it and make sure it doesn’t happen again, so that is what I’m going to do.”
What people had to say
Most of the comments under his apology video on TikTok seem to believe that Porter’s apology is genuine, praising him for accepting responsibility — most of which have been liked in good faith by Porter himself.
Other comments are skeptical about the sincerity of the long apology video. Porter has not liked or responded to the majority of these comments.
“Actions speak louder than words. While this is a step in the right direction, we have a right to be skeptical. Time will tell if you’re just being performative or if you’re genuine,” a TikTok user wrote in Porter’s apology video comments section.