Be a hero. Be a sheep.
We REALLY don't need any more sheepdogs. But now more than ever we are in desperate need of caring sheep.
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"There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. Some people prefer to believe that evil doesn't exist in the world, and if it ever darkened their doorstep, they wouldn't know how to protect themselves. Those are the sheep. Then you've got predators who use violence to prey on the weak. They're the wolves. And then there are those blessed with the gift of aggression, an overpowering need to protect the flock. These men are the rare breed who live to confront the wolf. They are the sheepdog." - American Sniper
The analogy of the sheep, the wolf and the sheepdog is a long favorite metaphor of military, law enforcement and self-proclaimed “alphas” on YouTube. The metaphor went mainstream with the movie American Sniper in the scene where the father offers the above speech to teach his sons what to do in the face of a bully.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of Warrior Mindset explains it this way:
“If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path.” - On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs
Last week
, author of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls published an article called Tough Dads with grenades are a weirdly comforting fantasy. Why?In the article she lists a series of hero dads from famous movies and shows. These dads are all attractive, tough and ready to blow up the bad guy to protect their daughters.
Liam Neeson in Taken rescues his teenage daughter from traffickers. To protect her he kills 31 people.
Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us becomes a father figure to Ellie and protects her at all costs. To do so, he kills 39 people.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando also rescues his kidnapped daughter. He kills 84 people in the process.
Clearly, we love a sheepdog dad.
Cavallo points out that these fathers aren’t heroes by being present in their daughter’s lives. They are heroes because of the violent lengths they are willing to go to in order to protect them:
“Tough movie dads are usually isolated and lonely men incapable of connecting on a basic human level. They often don’t know how to express the depth of their love for their children or spouse. On these occasions, criminals come in handy: they give dad the chance to prove with ammunition what he would never be able to say with words.
Of course, the vast majority of kids (luckily) are never kidnapped by armed bands of dangerous villains, yet these movies offer men and their families a comforting fantasy: we may feel disconnected and even aggrieved by our emotional distance, but if push came to shove, dad would blow up the entire world to save us.” - Francesca Cavallo
It’s ok if Dad isn’t emotionally present. So long as he is willing to violently protect us.
Cavallo’s article reminded me of another article I read recently called Rigged to Explode: What we reap when men are taught to be heroes rather than neighbors by
.Where Cavallo shows the glory of the sheepdog on the silver screen, Garrett shows how that fantasy plays out in real life. And at what cost.
Garrett quotes an article from The New York Times that in part follows a man named Sky in Georgia as he goes to visit his grandkids.
Here’s The New York Times:
“He brought along candy for the children and his “go bag” of survival gear, which had traveled with him everywhere for the last several years. It contained all the supplies he thought he might need to be self-sufficient in a power outage or a societal collapse: tourniquets, binoculars, knives, whistles, flashlights, water filters, fire starters, a snakebite kit, a firearm, a slingshot, a Bible.”
And here is Garrett:
Jaime and his family live on a quiet suburban cul-de-sac, not an active combat zone. But when Sky shows up to visit two seven-year-old twins and a pair of toddlers, he loads up as if a holy war might break out mid-way through an episode of Bluey. He imagines, I suppose, charging into the fray, a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other. He’s prepared to love his family out loud, as long as that love can manifest through violence…”
As long as that love can manifest through violence.
The problem with sheepdogs
I read a good amount of articles today breaking down the sheep, wolf, sheepdog metaphor, but my favorite take came from a humble sheep herder on Reddit:
“I hate this analogy, I utterly despise it. I hate it because it’s wrong…
I own and have bred legitimate sheep dogs, watched how they train, and observed them in action… what the quote doesn't tell you is why the sheep respond well to the sheep dogs. It’s because the sheep are terrified of the sheepdogs. Sheep cannot tell the difference between a sheep dog or a wolf.” - Reddit user kcb1986
We’ve been told as women that we need a man to protect us.
But protect us from who?
From men.
We need men to protect us from men.
Sheep cannot tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf.
Men are our protector. Men are our predator. Our protectors are our predators.
If men stopped harming women, there would be no need for protection.
The person most likely to attack a woman is not some other man, it’s HER man! Her husband or boyfriend.
The UN reports that over 85,000 women were murdered in 2023. 60% of those were from her own sexual partner or family member.
A woman’s own sheepdog is more than twice as likely to kill her than an unknown “wolf.”
The line between sheepdog and wolf is a circle.
Quick reminder: you are not a dog. You are a sheep.
Where the sheep, wolf, sheepdog metaphor really falls apart is that with the animal analogy we are dealing with three entirely different species. Dogs and wolves are both different species than the sheep they protect/attack. But the men who cast themselves as sheepdogs are not a different species than the sheep they protect. The men whom we cast as “wolves” are not a different species than the sheep they attack.
WE. ARE. ALL. JUST. SHEEP!
A sheepdog is nothing but a sheep in a dog costume. A wolf is nothing but a sheep we’ve painted a wolf costume onto.
We do not need any more sheep cosplaying as guard dogs.
But we are in desperate need of more sheep willing to just. be. sheep. Willing to care for their fellow sheep. Willing to care with tools that don’t involve knives, tourniquets or guns.
The problem with a hero is that he requires a villain.
“They often don’t know how to express the depth of their love for their children or spouse. On these occasions, criminals come in handy…” -
Liam Neeson was an extremely absent father to his teenage daughter in Taken. His redemption into “good father” required a comparison to and attack of men worse than him.
The problem with a “good guy” is that his status depends on the existence of a “bad guy.”
And historically, we have a horrible track record of mis-casting each other in the role of bad guy. This almost always involves killing thousands of our fellow sheep before we realize yet again, that we’re all just sheep.
History is nothing but a long, long line of sheep killing other sheep thinking they are wolves.
In America, who we cast as the “bad guy” in movies provides a mirror to who we cast as the wolf of the moment.
Old Westerns cast Native Americans as the bad guy in hundreds of cowboy vs Indian movies.
When in reality, the Native Americans were clearly DEFINITELY not the wolves in this fight. They were mercilessly slaughtered, forced out of their homes and way of life for centuries, by those calling themselves “the good guys.”
The Japanese were often the bad guys in movies from the 40s to the 60s. (Those would be the same ones who had two entire cities annihilated by the “good guys.”) Those movies did not age well:
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“Oh a Batman movie from the 40s? How come I’ve never heard of this?……. BATMAN! NOOOOO!”
Throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, Communists were reliably cast as the bad guy. In the 90s and 00s the good guys were always fighting off terrorist groups (who just so happened to usually be Muslim).
It has become so hard for us to nail down an uncomplicated bad guy that we have repeatedly turned to fighting aliens in outer space.
God so many action movies blow up aliens.
But again, lean in too much, start telling the aliens’ back story just a little, and we are right back where we started.
The aliens become sheep. The bad guys are sheep. We are all just sheep killing each other.
This is not to say the flock is never in danger. Yes there are real threats to us. Yes occasionally the flock needs protection.
But there are SO MANY ways to protect a flock other than killing each other with guns and bombs. Diplomatic nonviolent communication protects us. Brave truth-telling journalism protects us. Caring for each other protects us. Not dividing sheep into unfair hierarchies protects us. An equal distribution of financial resources protects us. Peace treaties protect us. Providing equal access to adequate food, education, healthcare and shelter protects us. Refusing to see our fellow sheep as wolves protects us.
And historians show us that in societies that value partnership over domination, violence is rare. Where violence is rare, the need for protection is rare.
Sheepdogs necessitate their own role by themselves being violent.
The sheepdog ethos holds that only violence can protect us. And that those willing to use violence to protect us are “rare.”
This is not true.
We are in no short supply of sheep calling themselves sheepdogs. In fact, we have a severe sheepdog costume surplus problem. The supply FAR outweighs the demand.
A demand has had to be created by way of issuing wolf costumes in order to meet supply.
Violence is not love
“…there are those blessed with the gift of aggression…” - American Sniper
Aggression is not a gift. Aggression is not a blessing.
“What if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens?” - Lt. Col. Dave Grossman
Violence is not love.
We’ve been taught it is, but it is not. Violence has no place in love.
Knives, grenades and guns have no place in a toolkit meant for caring.
When care becomes violent, “heroes” become predators.
Liam Neeson, to care for his daughter made 31 other daughters and sons fatherless.
Sky is armed and ready to rid other children of their parents in order to show his love for his own.
Killing another daughter’s father does not mean you are a loving father to your daughter.
The good guy is just the bad guy’s bad guy.
Sheep cannot tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf.
Our problem isn’t that we have an innate predator problem. Our far greater problem is that by needing to be a hero, our “protectors” turn themselves and their fellow humans into predators.
Heroes make bad neighbors.
“Back to Sky. What breaks my heart about his story is that it’s clear that this is a man who wants to care, who would like to love his family. And his family is giving him direct clues as to how he could show that love and care, but he’s bought so far into a contrary story that he can’t hear them. In Sky’s mind, it’s possible to prove his love for Jennifer and Jaime and their kids through brute force, but that’s not what they need. What they’re asking for is connection and empathy.” -
I bet if Liam Neeson’s daughter could choose between having her dad willing to kill 31 men for her or being around to read to her, tucking her in at night and volunteering in her class at school- I bet she would choose that over the killing thing.
Sky’s grandchildren would too.
We are not in need of any more heroes, but we are in such desperate need of good neighbors.
I don’t know, maybe the need to be a hero goes too deep for these men.
If that’s the case, fine, so be it. Be a protector. But at the very least, ask those you are protecting what form they would like their protection to take. Otherwise, you are more concerned with your own delusions of grandeur than actual protection.
Want to be my hero?
Go on then.
Be my hero. Not with guns, but by voting for equal rights.
Be my hero. Not with knives, but by going to therapy.
Be my hero by saying “that’s not cool” when your friend tells a sexist joke.
Be my hero by doing the dishes.
Be my hero by calling your senator to voice your concern about how our fellow sheep- our trans, immigrant, working class and female sheep are being harmed right now.
Be my hero by scheduling your child’s next doctor’s appointment.
Be my hero by reacting with self-reflection instead of defensiveness when a family member tells you that you’ve hurt them.
Be my hero by visiting your mom in her care facility.
Be my hero by bringing your neighbor dinner.
Be my hero by attending the next city council meeting.
Be my hero by protecting vulnerable sheep through care. Not violence.
Too boring?
Then you’re not actually interested in being a protector.
You just want to hurt other people and call yourself a hero.
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I remember reading about an initiative where shepherds added a llama to each sheep herd, because unlike with a dog llamas can become part of the herd. But when a canine (iirc feral dogs were more of a problem than wolves) attacked, while sheep panicked and ran, llamas charged. So the dogs learned to avoid the herds with a llama because from their perspective those sheep were vicious.
And when there weren’t dog attacks, the llamas were happy herd members. Eating grass, joining in with sheep play, just being a member of the community.
So if someone’s going “I have the capacity for violence, but I want to live a life based on love”, I’d rather they learn from llamas than sheepdogs.
As a nonviolent man, I often felt out of place when discussing violence with other men. I was never attracted to the glory nor conquest. My growing up religion taught that it was a sacred duty to be the protector. I have since shunned those teachings and happily preparing school lunches, reading bedtime stories for rebel girls, and doing groceries. I enjoy caring for my family, it brings me joy.