Do you come from a French speaking background? The French always classify objects into male/female categories. They say “la mason” and “le chat”. Houses are female, apparently, and cats, even the female ones, are male.
French is not the only language to do this. Arabic as three categories: male, female, and neutral.
Why?
It might stem from certain religious or metaphysical outlooks on nature: male and female, anima and animus, are often thought to be inherent spiritual qualities that define the essence of things–things either have a male essence or a female essence; and it’s no surprise that some cultures may come to this outlook–male and female, our relations to each other, are deeply rooted in some of the most important and valuable aspects of life. It’s no wonder we make such a big deal out of it, a big enough deal that we project our awareness of the male/female distinction onto some of the highest or most fundamental aspects of the universe.
All Germanic and Romanic languages have articles - some have three (male, female, neutral), some have two (male, female), and one (English) has merely one.
For me, culture is the context that allows us to relate (think and feel) to both ourselves and that which we, as individuals, are immersed in and so culture is a highly personalised/individualised phenomena.
Well, sure, personalized/individualized phenomena. ← But does that include physical phenomena? I’m sure it must. Culture includes scientific outlooks–it tells our minds (we in the West) that when we look out at the stars at night, we are looking at a vast cosmos that’s 14 billion years old. That must taint how we experience the physical world (holistically) in a phenomenological sense.
And your picture (which didn’t seem to come through in your quote for some reason) tells me that culture influences what we make of the physical world: protests, violence, war–it becomes physical–in a way that, had we developed a different cultural perspective, may not have unfolded.