So, you're saying that heterosexual women cannot be trusted to perceive the wants and needs of men as accurately as lesbians? that heterosexual men are less able to perceive the wants and needs of women as accurately as gay men?

I bet those are quite likely both true, on average. Maybe if lesbians are masculinized to some extent they would also get some dose of the male inferiority in figuring out feelings at all? Absolutely no data on that, so I don't cast aspersions on lesbians. But the idea that gay men are often more attuned to feelings and understand women better feels pretty intuitive. And with that variable accounted for, I suspect it's true.

But that's kind of leading us astray. I would say this: If a woman is strongly attracted to a man in a dating stage of a relationship, then other women who know him well who are not attracted are going to more accurately perceive what's going on with him. Same with male/female reversed.

As for lesbians and gay men, understanding someone's needs is not the same as meeting them. Note also that people in love tend to not perceive the other person accurately.

You get some good laughs extending the theory out to your bristlecone pines, but like most theories it has a range it applies to and a range it doesn't. Here the range might be humans from the same culture.

Now, I may misperceive what little girls need and want - but surely even my misconceptions will lead me closer to meeting their needs and wants than not giving a damn what happens to them.

Parents care a great deal about their kids. So do various teachers and others who work with kids. Yes, you can find individual girls who are neglected and misunderstood, and that's where many pedophiles' dreams rest. I'd guess those are the parents you're thinking of as not caring about them. But that doesn't mean the class of girls as a whole is misunderstood.

I have no reason to doubt that you are great with kids and have wonderful friendships. I used to. I was the favorite grown-up of several small girls and medium-sized girls.

But we're talking here about one very specific aspect of a child's life. Should she have the freedom to engage in sexual activity with adults if she wants to? I don't think pedophiles have any special positive knowledge on that subject. If they have personal (illegal) knowledge, that's surely subject to their strong bias of wanting to think it was good, it's lacking the control group of what would happen if there had been no sexual activity, it lacks long-term follow-up and it's anecdotal.

We may be as a class especially unlikely to correctly perceive what the hugs and kisses and cuddles mean about what the girl in front of us wants, and also for the general case of girls in society.