The author's training in feminist theory began and developed during her graduate years in the USA in the first half of the 1990s. Ironically, while a college student at the University of Verona in the late 1980s she didn't take advantage of the fact that her university housed Diotima, the most important feminist group of the country. She finally missed the first opportunity to get involved in feminism, it is significant that it did(n't) happen in the academic context. Her generation has had a different involvement with feminism vis--vis those who participated in second-wave feminism and its aftermaths. She would claim that training in feminist theory in the classroom is the "feminist mode" that was historically available to women of her generation. When US feminists boldly declare that it is improper, or wrong, to "simply" discuss gender issues, they are obviously blind to the fact that the racial history of their country is not the norm.