A self-described "white, working-class, fat butch dyke who never passed," she started what she called "rabble rousing" when she was a young woman.
Eight weeks later, two gay male friends were rehearsing a college production of Lysistrata at her apartment and stayed overnight.
[citation needed] An activist and an organizer, Penelope attended the first conference of the Gay Academic Union in 1973 at the City College of New York.
She was a delegate to the National Women's Conference in Houston in 1977, and she participated in the planning meetings that led to the founding of the Lesbian Herstory Archives.
"[4] She was one of the first scholars to teach women's studies courses, including Twentieth-Century Lesbian Novels and Feminist Literary Criticism.