The developers of a female-focused sex toy are alleging gender bias at the International Consumer Electronics Show after organizers revoked an innovation award honoring the company and prohibited it from showcasing its product.

Lora Haddock, founder and CEO of Lora DiCarlo, said her team had been overjoyed when the company’s Osé personal massager was selected as the CES 2019 Innovation Awards honoree in the robotics and drone product category.

It’s the company’s first product – a hands-free device developed by an almost entirely female team of engineers using “new micro-robotic technology that mimics all of the sensations of a human mouth, tongue, and fingers, for an experience that feels just like a real partner”, Haddock wrote in an open letter on the company’s website.

“My team rejoiced and celebrated,” she wrote. “A month later our excitement and preparations were cut short.”

Administrators with the Consumer Technology Association, the organization behind at the annual Las Vegas-based trade show, had contacted the company and told them that not only were they rescinding the award, the company would not be allowed to showcase the product at CES 2019.

Haddock wrote that immediately after she asked why the award was revoked, CTA told the company that entries “deemed by CTA in their sole discretion to be immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image will be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”. In a statement, CTA officials said the product “should not have been accepted for the Innovation Awards Program” because it “does not fit into any of our existing product categories”.

“CTA has communicated this position to Lora DiCarlo,” the statement reads. “We have apologized to the company for our mistake.”

Haddock called this “an even more insulting and frankly ridiculous assertion”. She noted that her team of engineers designed the Osé in partnership with Oregon State University, whose robotics lab is ranked as one of the best in the nation.

“Osé is the subject of eight pending patents and counting for robotics, biomimicry, and engineering feats,” she wrote. “Osé clearly fits the Robotics and Drone category – and CTA’s own expert judges agree.”

CTA’s statement does not explain why Lora DiCarlo can no longer showcase its product at CES, and officials did not immediately respond to follow-up questions. But Techcrunch noted that OhMiBod, a Kegel exerciser, won the digital health and fitness product category in 2016. Meanwhile, Haddock pointed out 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”.

“Men’s sexuality is allowed to be explicit with a literal sex robot in the shape of an unrealistically proportioned woman and VR porn in point of pride along the aisle,” she wrote. “Female sexuality, on the other hand, is heavily muted if not outright banned. You cannot pretend to be unbiased if you allow a sex robot for men but not a vagina-focused robotic massager for blended orgasm.”

Haddock said it was important to call CTA out because “these biases smother innovation by blocking access to funding, exposure, and consumers that could take brands and products to the next level”.

“You never know how technology can be used, the future of healthcare might well be in the patent for a sex toy,” she wrote. “But if CES and CTA are so intent on keeping women and sex tech out, we’ll never find out.”