Last year, the Consumer Electronics Show gave an “innovation” award to the Lora DiCarlo Osé “blended orgasm” sex toy, then took the award back because the device was considered “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane” and out of keeping with the show’s image. And then, after a public outcry led by Lora DiCarlo founder Lora Haddock, CES reversed course and gave the award back.
The debacle appears to have been an educational one for CES, because now, a year later, the show has a sex toy lined up for an award once again, and has invited sex tech companies to exhibit at the show in Las Vegas, from January 7 through January 10.
The Lioness “smart” vibrator has been named a finalist for the CES “Last Gadget Standing” award, according to a report by The Las Vegas Review-Journal. Advertised as “the world's most advanced rabbit-style vibrator,” the toy gathers biofeedback in the form of “real data from your own arousal and orgasm” in order to personalize and improve the individual user’s experience—presumably making “arousal and orgasm” even better.
Liz Klinger, the Lioness CEO and founder, credited Haddock with opening the doors for women’s sex tech at CES.
“We’ve known about (the show’s) policies quite well over the years, having had our own issues being part of the show ourselves and having written about our own experience a few years ago,” Klinger told the Review-Journal. “If Lora DiCarlo hadn’t received a signed letter from CTA executives and had it go out the way it did, no one would had known this was happening to sex tech companies.”
Lioness has run into similar issues earlier this year, with the Samsung-run “Growth & Innovation in the Wearables Device Market” conference, in San Francisco. As AVN.com reported, Klinger was ordered to remove the Lioness display by a Samsung official, and told, “you don’t belong here.”
A week later, Samsung issued an apology—but not to Klinger directly, instead sending a statement to the tech news site The Verge.
Of the 10 finalists in the “Last Gadget Standing” category, Lioness is the only sex-related product. Other finalists include am electronic device for relieving sinus pain, a translation tool designed to overcome the “constraints of language barriers,” and Octobo, a “soft, cuddly” robot that doubles as a learning device for children.
Photo By Lioness
