I found this article from 1899 that addresses your question. I didn't read it. I just wished to show my Google mastery. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27699089

Interesting question. Just a quick one and I'll get back to this: Grammatical gender appears to be arbitrary or at least partially arbitrary in most languages, like German for example. As Mark Twain put it of that language:

"Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl."

This book by Lakoff is also relevant:

https://www.amazon.com/Women-Fire-Dangerous-Things-Categories/dp/0226468046

The most intimate nouns are gendered. Man has a penis. Woman has a vagina. These things become analogical/metaphorical scheme by which we try to apprehend the world.

Folks still gender objects in terms of stereotyped or personal associations.

If we are sorting guns and flowers into gendered categories, where do we put them?

Raw categorizing in terms of belonging to male or female is expected.

Folks still gender objects in terms of stereotyped or personal associations.

If we are sorting guns and flowers into gendered categories, where do we put them?

Raw categorizing in terms of belonging to male or female is expected. — Nils Loc

Can we prove that is actually how the process got started? I would agree this seems a plausible theory, I'm just wondering if any anthropologists, linguists, or language historians have some in-depth theories on this.

Also, why gender non-gendered objects anyways? That seems like an odd way to relate to the world. I don't even get why non-scientific societies would think in those terms. Language does not have to have gendered words, but some do, and it became the convention. So odd.

Also, why gender non-gendered objects anyways? That seems like an odd way to relate to the world. I don't even get why non-scientific societies would think in those terms. Language does not have to have gendered words, but some do, and it became the convention. So odd. — Schopenhauer1

It's not odd at all. It's as odd as metaphor or analogy which becomes standardized (all too familiar).

What is hot (trending) right now?

Damn, you folks are embarrassingly brilliant (intelligent) and light on your feet (gracefully quick).

The Mother is the ground from which men emerge.

My father is my mother.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a banana is just a banana.

A duck's vagina is a twisted labyrinth of dead ends.

Are all labyrinths then secretly contextualized by a duck's vagina? Who told me that a duck's vagina is like a labyrinth? Who told me what a labyrinth is like?

Who or what is impregnating me with meanings?

No thing is like anything else, except where we cherry pick our likenesses, for some aim. Language is full of historical accidents and arbitrary uses probably.

We do what works. But does it work for you?

Does the basket hold your berries?

Does an Iphone hold, store or contain your pictures?