I absolutely think that males protect...never an issue with me...and one of the things I love about men.
I am a female and am strongly geared towards protection of children.
It was a toss-up between the choice of pronoun but I decided to go with the female instinctual aspect so referenced 'her'. No bias or malintent...
I refer you to your gif you posted which I thought was a good one,
imgflip.com/gif/a9dp3g, and up-voted it. You could easily have changed the sexes and it still would have worked, but I liked the one chose.