i thought pokemon gender ratios were community polls my entire life

i just found out that pokemon gender ratios are not community polls and i don’t know what to do with this information
like when i saw that a pokemon was 87.5% male i thought that meant 87.5% of fans agreed it was a boy. i thought there were actual people voting on this shit and whenever i saw a 50/50 ratio i just assumed it was a particularly controversial pokemon
apparently that’s not how it works. apparently a bulbasaur can just be a girl. there can be male fennekins. this entire time i thought each species had one gender and the percentages were just how strongly the community agreed on it
i only found out because someone called a pikachu “she” and i corrected them. my friend asked me how i thought pokemon reproduced and i had absolutely nothing to say
i’ve been sitting here thinking about this for like 20 minutes
why did i think they were holding elections for bulbasaur