Once upon a time there was a girlfriend, and during our breakup she told me. This story originally appeared in the 2021 October issue of Town & Country. Writer, speaker and cultural icon Roxane Gay returns to Australia for an entertaining and enlightening conversation about her extraordinary body of work, her dedication to uplifting emerging voices, and to offer her famously sharp takes on feminism, race and politics. The picture above shows Roxane Gay with her wife, Debbie Millman. Collected in the 2014 book Bad Feminist, they posit a world where (gasp) we can actually talk honestly about searching for identity, being less than perfect, and thinking hard on privilege and acceptance. Over time that very small part grew, and I came to understand that acquired tastes may be more challenging, but they are also infinitely more valuable. Roxane Gay is a novelist and essayist whose online essays you've probably had forwarded to you by someone you adore. A very small part of me knew she was doing me a favor. I remember that breakup distinctly not because I’m still sad about it but because, as my ex was detailing everything about me she found too difficult to appreciate, a very small part of me knew she was talking about the best, most interesting parts of me. They don’t require any real consideration. Things that are universally appealing are unacquired tastes. It has no sharp edges, no flawed surfaces. Universal appeal is a dreary, bland thing. On the Agenda: feminism, race, writing, art, pop culture, food, and, of course, politics. She’s prolific on Twitter, where she’ll share florid descriptions of beautiful men one moment and scathing replies to trolls another, and meditative on Tumblr, where she laces together cooking stories with her thoughts about the world. It’s writer Roxane Gay in conversation with guests who have something necessary to say about the issues that matter most to herand hopefully to you as well. The Roxane Gay most people know best is the online Gay, the written-down Gay. I am not interested in much of anything that will appeal to everyone. The Roxane Gay Agenda is the bad feminist podcast of your dreams. There is a dangerous tendency to conflate representation and inclusion with universality. We now have a cultural obsession with universality. All too often, taste is used as a cudgel to force conformity, to create a social hierarchy where those with the right tastes are culturally valued and those with the wrong tastes are not.