Are genderless Pokemon, especially most Legendary Pokemon, considered non-binary?

From the start, genders of Pokemon (except for Nidoran) are ambiguous as they lack any info about it until Gen 2 where not only gender has been introduced but breeding as well. You can tell by looking at these symbols ♂️ or ♀️, especially during battles. However, some Pokemon such as Magnemite and Voltorb do not seem to have any gender at all and Legendary and Mythical Pokemon like Mewtwo, Mew, Lugia, and Ho-Oh often fall in this category.

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Though the terms sex and gender have been used interchangeably sinceat least the fourteenth century, in contemporary academicliterature they usually have distinct meanings. Sex generally refersto an organism’s biological sex, while gender usually refers to eithersocial roles based on the sex of a person (gender role) or personalidentification of one’s own gender based on an internal awareness(gender identity).

Using this definition, the male/female/genderless trichotomy falls under the concept of “sex”, which is separate from one’s gender. In this case, the word “genderless” should be more aptly named “sexless”, as in unable to reproduce, whereas “non-binary” is a term recently coined as meaning “one that does not identify as belonging to the man/woman gender dichotomy”. Does this distinction apply to Pokémon? Perhaps, though it is very much a human-made distinction that was only popularized recently, and one may argue that only those in the Undiscovered egg group are truly “sexless”, as others can still breed with Ditto.

In any case, considering Game Freak is a Japanese Studio and that the first Pokémon games were released in 1996, they likely didn’t have the concept of “genderless” as modern western cultures do. The terms “gender” and “sex” were interchangeable, and they probably didn’t intend it to be ambiguous. Therefore, the answer is no: GF didn’t create the Pokémon World with modern western cultural/social constructs in mind, hence the concept of “non-binary” does not exist in the Pokémon Universe. Calling a Magnemite “non-binary” is like calling a magnet “non-binary”; it just won’t make sense.

Funnily enough, Maushold is also “genderless”. Maybe they just didn’t want to classify it to avoid suggesting gay couples?