Homophily

Homophily is the assumption that "birds of a feather flock together". In sociology, it has been presented as a principle to express love of the same (or similar), it is rooted in the belief that people connect to similar individuals more frequently. However, in the text "Queering Homophily", written by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, this belief is questioned and criticized. The author writes that homophily is used as the building block of network sciences, creating pathways that discriminate based on patterns of presumed similarity. This leads to detrimental consequences which standardize people into uniformity, connecting people into "neighbourhoods" of sameness, that promote lack of variety and monotony. Homophily, according to Chun, is used as an excuse to perpetuate racism, sexism and inequality, by posing it as a biological fact of human nature.