Sir, – As a man I do not know whether to be mildly amused or upset and offended at the actions of a member of the public and the police, for reporting and removing the stone phallus from Simply Dutch at Leeming Bar.

Mildly amused at the thought of the complaint as it was reported, and the fact that the police officers whose job it was to actually remove it from the premises, had by design or accident, managed to keep their faces out of the picture printed in the paper of them loading it into their vehicle.

Upset and offended that such a complaint could be made and that it should be wrongly called a sex object. For centuries in art we have had naked and seminaked men and women portrayed in all forms, most notably for general public viewing, in stone and marble. There must be countless examples in parks, and public buildings all over the world, largely of naked and semi naked women, sometimes with male lovers intertwined, but almost always with their breasts on show, and no one calls them obscene.

I visited the British Museum last year and noted the number of statues of naked men where almost all of them had been emasculated. When I asked why this was, the answer was that the prudish members of society in the preceding centuries had done it, but the women remained intact.

By no stretch of the imagination can a four-foot stone phallus be a sex object, but it can be admired as a work of art depicting male virility.

Of course, by raising this objection, the usual result has been interest and probably orders for copies way beyond what may have been expected, and more I understand are on the way.

If a woman’s breasts are not obscene, how is it that a man’s penis is? I think it is time society grew up a bit and realised that an object is not of itself obscene, it is the misuse of the object and its reason for existance that is obscene, money for example.

C D KIRK Brompton, Northallerton.