OK, let's start with the beginning.

The antique Romans religion was very similar with the actual Shinto from today Japan.

Basically, they believed that exists many gods, some bigger, some smaller, and that everything has a soul and/or god who live into, either a house, a tree or a rock.

That was reflected also in language. For example, for them, "the house" was a person of female gender, then in language, "casa" has a female gender.

That aspect was inherit by the Latin-based languages.

In Romanian, "the house", meaning "casa", just like in Latin, has a gender: female. This is reflected in grammatical constructs.

o casa, doua case (one house, two houses)

just like for "woman"

o femeie, doua femei (one woman, two women)

Other things has a male gender, for example "mountain", meaning "munte" has male gender.

un munte, doi munti (one mountain, two mountains)

just like for "man"

un om, doi oameni (one man, two men)

Maybe you noticed that our enumeration is specific on gender, not like yours (one, two).

In Romanian, and all other Latin based languages, practically does not exists the concept of "thing" (it), anything either human, animal or object, has a gender.

Anything is either "he" or "she", excluding some special cases when the gender change according the grammatical construct, and they are so called "neutral/undefined gender".

un lucru (M), doua lucruri (F) (one thing, two things)

In other words, you talk about a rock, mountain or river, in the same way you talk about a person. Things inherited from the Latin language.

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Complicated? True. It is freaking complicated. The Italian and Romanian are one of most difficult languages to learn properly.

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Don't get me started about all this politically-correct taurine excreta.

Ha ha!

I think that when will appear robots with intelligence like humans, the Romanians will have no problems to accept them as honorable citizens.

BTW, what gender has a "robot" in Romanian?

Male.

In English, some people refer to, for example, their cars as "she".
Now, if I did that sort of thing about my X200, I could say it must be that time of the month for her.

See? I said so...

I have never understood the point of assigning gender to inanimate objects in language, like in languages with Latin roots. Darth's historical explanation seems reasonable. I figured some group of people must have been sitting around one day and decided, "Oh yeah, obviously spoons are female, but forks are male. Houses are female, but homes are male, etc., etc."

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Ha ha! And understandable, she has headaches...

BTW, in Romanian, "the computer" has "neutral gender", as its gender change depending in the grammatical constructs.

un computer (M), doua computere (F) (one computer, two computers)

They just believed that in every thing lives a god (who has a gender, of course), then has a soul, just like is the Shinto religion of the today Japan. The Shinto believers think the same way, even today.

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Isn't robot a Slavic word? (my knowledge of it stops there...)
I don't think of things like "ze" as "political correctness" more as a more accurate way of typing and think they could be a good move. I've been referred to as he, she and it (more the former, as I am male) in my life and didn't take offence to any and wouldn't have sympathy for anyone called "the wrong one" but I do think that people ought to be able to self-identify as they wish.

The general term for that sort of belief is animism. The belief that everything has a soul.

It is an invented word, from a Sci-Fi play by Karel Capek, and come from "robota" - "worker" in Czech language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.

But his "robots" was rather like the Replicants from Blade Runner (artificial made humans)

Oh, sorry, yes an anglicised version. Is "robota" feminine then, out of interest?

I do not know Czech, sorry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Republic

The Czech Republic is part of European Union, while I am Russian. All I know that the meaning of "robota" is "worker", as in "hand worker", "line worker", laborer.