On just about every first date scheduled through a dating app , Rowan Rosenthal could count on one awkward moment happening again and again. "The waiter would ask what we want to eat and the other person would try to be polite and say something like, 'She'll have this,' and that's the point where I'd be like Oh this is kind of uncomfortable," Rosenthal says. Rosenthal is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns . But many of the people they met on dating apps assumed that Rosenthal was a woman, and didn't think to ask for their pronouns. Rosenthal had to make a tough decision in situations like that: Let their dates misgender them or risk making it (more) awkward by correcting them. Maybe the answer seems simple (because it's important that people know how to refer to you), but first dates are already nerve-wracking and it seemed unfair to Rosenthal that pronouns were one more thing they had to worry about.