YouPorn offers Lora DiCarlo solace after CES award blunder

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

CES is still heavily a cis-male focused event. While it has made strides (this year four of nine keynote speakers are women) to remedy that, every step forward seems to be a step back.

Like stripping an innovation award from a female-focused piece of sex tech developed and built by a largely female team.

That’s what happened to Lora DiCarlo, the company behind the Osé, a hands-free blended orgasm device that is now denied a place at CES because of double standard bullshit.

Long story short, read this recap from The Verge. The Osé Robotic Massager won the “honoree” designation in the robotics and drones category of the CES Innovation Awards. Later, a line of ripe, festering nonsense was delivered as the collar-stretching CTA (Consumer Technology Association) rescinded the award.

Putting a cap on the continued sexist nature of CES, as a CTA spokesperson told TechCrunch, Lora DiCarlo can’t even exhibit the Osé.

That’s fucked up, CES allows sex toys focused on male pleasure. Walk around. They are there.

Anyway, search “sex toys CES” and you’ll see that this Lora DiCarlo double standard story is stretching across the internet like a horny little octopus, and I’m going to guess that the CTA is going to have to do something to answer the criticism.

For what it’s worth, inclusion is not only important for a thing like CES; it’s fucking necessary.

Ignoring the innovations of women (for women) or the LGBTQ community (or any other marginalized community) is just fucking stupid.

Constantly stroking the egos of Silicon Valley white boys in cargo shorts is why half the technology presented at CES crashes and burns. Here’s a piece of innovative tech with a purpose, and CES fucks it up.

Yeah, it pisses me off. And it pissed off YouPorn too. In a letter addressed to Lora DiCarlo (and exclusively obtained by KnowTechie) it offered a nice consolation prize for the Osé, which comes to market this fall.

While almost every company that shows up for CES with its shirt successfully tucked into its pants gets an Innovation Award, not every company gets $50,000 in free advertising from a porn site that got four billion site visits last year.

Here’s the letter YouPorn Vice President Charlie Hughes sent to Lora DiCarlo, with one sick CES burn at the end.

We heard about your award being revoked at CES this year, and we want to send good vibes your way. While CES seems to want to only focus on toilets that connect with Alexa or a bread vending machine, we feel that Investing in technology that alleviates stress, breaks down gender stigmas and puts a smile on millions of people’s faces every day, Is far more important.

SexTech remains a largely overlooked part of the technology industry, as we know from having been deeply involved In the space, sponsoring events like The SexTech Hackathon and offering our community ways to explore integrating tech in the bedroom with The Couple’s Sex Quiz. We congratulate you on creating an Intelligent and sophisticated product. We know what it’s like to build a brand In an industry that’s deemed to be “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image,” and we want you to know that we support you.

We’re excited about your launch in fall and would like to offer $50,000 worth of advertising on YouPorn.com for one month. As you know, most social media and television platforms don’t accept ads from sexually focused businesses, but we would be proud to promote Ose on You Porn, one of the most coveted pieces of advertising real estate In the world. Over the past year we’ve received over 4 billion visits to the site, with almost 30 percent being female identifying.

The CES board clearly do not appreciate the value of your product, but we are sure their wives would.

Damn. Straight fire at the end there from Hughes. I have reached out to Lora DiCarlo for comment on the YouPorn letter, and will update if I hear anything. They are most likely swamped with press requests today.

---

Update: Rachel Johnston, publicist for Lora DiCarlo, has responded, stating, “We’re appreciative that this controversy around women in technology has exposed us to many potential partnerships. We are evaluating all partnership offers and requests and determining what is strategically best for the Lora DiCarlo brand.

---

The point is that CES is still making the same mistakes every year when it comes to inclusion and the way it treats females in the tech industry, and that makes it an event I abhor attending.

Going out of its way to make sure that Lora DiCarlo and the Osé don’t have a folding table to show off while citing some boilerplate idiocy seems like CES and its governing CTA organization still have a long way to go to really be inclusive.

Female-designed products for female pleasure should be fucking showcased on top of the freaking show.

No one wants a goddamn roll-up TV they can’t afford, they want a hands-free blended orgasm.

How do you think CES will respond? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Google releases Google Assistant Connect to put AI in everything
• IBM releases the world’s first commercial Quantum Computer
• The PowerPic photo frame lets you frame your loved one (your phone)
• Matrix Industries is showing off a smartwatch that runs on your body heat
• Gigabyte adds AI to a laptop to increase your battery life