Your editorial (These railroaded and defective hearings are an insult to American women, 28 September) began by asking – rhetorically – can you trust women? But trust is not what’s at issue, and we women do ourselves a disservice buying into the “trust women” narrative.

When my son goes to school, I give him lunch money. He chooses what food to buy, and I don’t question his choices. I do this because I trust him to make good decisions about what to eat.

Why is trust relevant to my actions? Because my son is 12 years old. If he were 30 years old – or even 20 or 18 – whether I trusted him to make good decisions would not factor into the equation, because adults have a right to autonomous decision-making about their bodies and lives that is not dependent upon their trustworthiness – it isn’t even dependent upon the likelihood of their making good decisions. If we know full well that an adult will make a stupid choice for himself, we still take it for granted that it’s his own stupid choice to make. Adults just have a right to autonomous decision-making about their lives.

Even entertaining a discussion about whether women can or should be “trusted” with decisions about their bodies concedes the point that women are childlike – are inferiors, such that men should control them.

The takeaway from Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination and the political spectacle is not that Republican men don’t trust women, but that they want control over them.

Dr Lindsey Porter

Honorary research fellow in philosophy, University of Sheffield

• Your editorial asks: “Can you trust women?” Given that 53% of white American women voted for the blatantly misogynist Donald Trump, the answer must be mostly “no”. Oh, I don’t trust many men either.

Neil Hanson

Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire

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