Originally Posted by
dwolsten
Exactly what is your alternative? Make a custom-designed airplane or bicycle for everyone? If you're going to manufacture something to fit humans in mass quantities, you have to pick some sizes and go with them. Most bicycle buyers are not going to pay the money it would cost for a custom-made frame, and with carbon fibre in particular that would be exorbitantly expensive since molds are used. The best you're going to get is taking "average" people in a range of sizes and making the thing to fit them, and it's absolutely true that average men have different proportions than average women so that justifies the manufacturing cost of women's-specific bikes at the higher price points.
How does an average size of a person that happens to be forced into a binary justify a higher cost? Because an average of people have different sizes like everyone else on the planet does not mean something should cost more unless we are talking really big outliers like say a tall basketball player for instance or someone with some odd fit requirements. Carbon can be made from tubes and lugs, like Colnago has done. However I would rather have a nice steel or ti frame and you could pretty easily offer more sizes then just a few stock sizes like say Rodriguez does and there bikes while hand made in 'Merica aren't super expensive and certainly if that market could grow and no more silly tariffs that have hurt a lot of american manufacturers it could come further down in price. I don't think this is a complete pipe dream but a realistic goal we could meet. Plus it doesn't have to have anything to do with binary constructs but just getting people better fitting bikes.