 Comparing the status of the aged to that of women as woman, Beauvoir notes that both occupy the position of the Other and that as Other both are subject to the powers of mythical, exploitive biologies. Though The Coming of Age pays closer attention to the diversity behind the unifying myths and works with a somewhat different conception of otherness, it sounds remarkably similar to The Second Sex as it traces the sources of the marginal status of the aged. While The Second Sex accused patriarchy of depriving women of their subject status by barring them from the project and devaluating the fleshed experience of the erotic, The Coming of Age argues that the non-subject status of the aged can be traced to the fact that they are barred from their projects and their erotic possibilities. “The old man”, Beauvoir writes, “looks to active members of the community like one of a ‘different species’” because he is not engaged in a project (1972[1970], 217, cf. 1970, 231). 