A "moo" point

Let me begin by apologizing for that horrible pun, I'm just not feeling that creative. I decided to respond to Kate's post "men are more important than cows" because I liked the intangibility of it. I'm not sure what the actual argument was, but i liked the crticism of gender determining language. In lakoff's book, she says that the names we give to animals might be determined by how frequently we see them. This point brought up an interesting point in my head as well while i was reading. She (is Lakoff is a woman?) proposes that we call ducks by their feminine reference because we see them more frequently. By "we" we have to assume that we are not included in their day to day culture, and are not familiar with their routines. So by only seeing them when they fly overhead or land on a pond next to us, we generally see females. Hang in there guys, I am going somewhere with this. Using this example as a template, think back to pre-civilized humans who would invade and conquer each other. When they would send their respective armies to invade one another, what gender do you think comprised a majority of their army? -men- So pre-civilized humans saw the males of their own species more frequently than their female counterparts deriving the name "mankind". So couldn't it be said that women are victims of our collective, pre-civilized system of nomenclature?
Like I said, this was just a thought that I had while I was reading, I hope it irratates at least one person while thinking about it. and also, somthing i learned last semester that i found interesting ****the word "female" is not simply the feminine conjugation of the word "male," it is derived from some latin word meaning "fertile"****