An Oregon startup founded and run by women that has developed a new women’s sex toy it says can produce a “hands-free blended orgasm” is protesting what it says is gender bias by the Consumer Electronics Show, after CES gave the company an award for “innovation in robotics,” then took the award away.
Lora DiCarlo, a company founded in 2017 by United States Navy veteran Lora Haddock, raised more than $1 million in financing last year, and acquired eight separate patents for the technology that went into its “Osé personal massager” (pictured above), a device that “mimics all of the sensations of a human mouth, tongue, and fingers, for an experience that feels just like a real partner” using “advanced micro-robotics” to produce a “blended” clitoral and G-spot orgasm—and does it all without “buzzing, desensitizing vibrations,” the company’s promo material claims.
Apparently the Consumer Technology Association, which stages the annual CES, agreed. On October 10, the Lora DiCarlo team received a letter from CTA saying that the Osé had been named a 2019 recipient of the group’s honor for robotics and drone innovation, according to BuzzFeed News.
But just three weeks later, the company received another letter from CTA, saying that the award had been taken away because, “Entries deemed by CTA in their sole discretion to be immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image will be disqualified,” according to the tech site Motherboard.
Haddock and her Lora DiCarlo colleagues were stunned—and outraged, especially because CES has no ban on sex toys, and in fact the growth of the show was fueled in part by adult industry technology, with CES and the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo running side-by-side in Las Vegas until 2012, as Motherboard recounted.
“It's important to note that a literal sex doll for men launched on the floor at CES in 2018 and a VR porn company exhibits there every year, allowing men to watch pornography in public as consumers walk by,” wrote Haddock in an open letter published on Tuesday.
“Clearly CTA has no issue allowing explicit male sexuality and pleasure to be ostentatiously on display. Other sex toys have exhibited at CES and some have even won awards, but apparently there is something different, something threatening about Osé, a product created by women to empower women," Haddock wrote.
But when a BuzzFeed News reporter asked for a reason why the award for the Osé was rescinded, a CTA spokesperson said, “it’s an adult product so not eligible.”
Haddock was also correct to note that sex toys have received CTA awards previously. In 2016, the “Little Bird", a “smart” vibrator that allowed women to experience sexual stimulation as they read erotic e-books, also received an innovation honor.
CES did not respond when asked by BuzzFeed about the allegations of sexism.
Photo by LoraDiCarlo.com
