Nothing funny about feldspar

I’ve seen more than a few posts lately including the phrase that starts “just because I have a vagina…” usually followed by “doesn’t mean I like to do housework” or “doesn’t mean I like kids” or “doesn’t mean I can’t make my own decisions.” This is probably just because them’s the bloggers I read, and it’s that whatchamacallit thingy about recency.

Anyway, I was wondering if that lead-in is the most common on the web according to Google. And you know what? It isn’t. Not by a long shot.[1]

It’s quite interesting to see how frequently the construction “just because I have a ____ doesn’t mean _______” is used by folks. I’ve used it myself at least three times here at the Rock Pile. (Well, technically, only once in this form, and twice reversed.)

Do the search yourself. Is it a cliché if we all put different words or phrases in the blanks? Is it somehow better if we vary the structure? What would be a better way of expressing the same thought of correlation but not causality?[2]

fn1: I was actually thinking of the phrase “just because I have a penis” as an alternative to “vagina” but I used the wildcard instead. “Penis” doesn’t appear in the first page, but “dick” does. The vagina variant doesn’t show up until page 2. So, instead of some sort of post about “feminism vs masculinism (masculism?)” you get a not-very-well-structured post on English.

fn2: How do English composition teachers stand it? All of the essays all look the same all of the time. My high school English comp teacher must hate blogs. She insisted that “it’s not a paragraph unless it has 12-14 sentences.” I’d fail, these days.