SOCIAL ISSUES By: Tai Jing Hui Social issue is a state of affairs that negatively affects the personal or social lives of individuals or the well-being of communities or larger groups within a society and about which there is usually public disagreement as to its nature, causes or solution. In this essay, we will know more about the common social issues such as crimes, sexuality and gender. First and foremost, there are several social issues which are under crimes and one of them is bullying. Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. It includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally and excluding someone from a group on purpose. Some examples of bullying are physical bullying, verbal bullying and cyberbullying. For those who are bullied, the effects of bullying include depression, anxiety, increased feelings of sadness and loneliness and so on. To avoid bullying, the adults must be a role model. It is because children will pick up antisocial behaviors like bullying from adult role models, parents, teachers and the media. There are also other ways like build a community of support and empower bystanders. Next, bribery is also one of the common social issues which is under crimes. Bribery means the offering, giving, receiving or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official, or other person, in charge of a public or legal duty. For instance, the real cases about bribery which happens in Malaysia is the former Selangor Chief Minister was convicted and jailed for corruption as he was accused accepting a bribe of RM250 000 for approving state land to a foreign bank. This will definitely cause the administration of a country to become weak and chaotic, affect the image and credibility of the country in the eyes of the international community and affect the quality of infrastructure or programs. Therefore, the government should update anti-bribery and anti-corruption policies, embed ABAC principles in corporate culture and ensure gifts and hospitality meet key criteria. Other than that, human trafficking is also a social issue that need to be taking seriously. Human trafficking is trade of humans for the purpose of forced labor, sexual
slavery or commercial sexual exploitation. It can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is divided into three types which are trafficking of children, sex trafficking and organ trade. For example, in Jakarta, Indonesia, there is a case about illegal trade of human organs involving police and immigration officers who were accused of helping traffickers send 122 Indonesians to a hospital in Cambodia to sell their kidneys. Indonesian authorities arrested 12 people, including a police officer and an immigration officer. It is very disappointed that sometimes people with positions are the one who allow human trafficking to happen. Apart from that, social issue like child abuse is gradually become serious in the society nowadays. Child abuse can be defined as physical, sexual, psychological maltreatment or neglect of a child especially by a parent or a caregiver. It can occur in a child's home, in the organizations, schools or communities the child interacts with. The consequences of child abuse include the child will suffer impaired lifelong physical health, impaired lifelong mental health and he or she will more likely to abuse others as an adult. To overcome these problems, the parents should always support their child, the teachers should teach the child positive parenting skills and the government should enhance laws to prohibit violent punishment. In addition, we must also take seriously with drug abuse. Drug abuse is the use of a drug in amounts or by methods that are harmful to the individual or others. Taking drugs is a criminal or anti-social behavior that will cause long-term personality change. Someone who taking drugs will experience two types of effects which are physical effects and psychological effects. The physical effects include abnormal vital signs like respiration, heart rate and blood pressure, chest or lung pain and so on while the psychological effects include intense desire to use the drug above all else, aggressiveness or irritability, selfishness and hopelessness. There will be some treatments to treat the person who addicted to drugs such as psychological treatment, medication treatment and heroin-assisted treatment. Following by the drug abuse is gangsterism. Gangsterism is the culture of belonging to organized gangs of criminals which involving violence. It is an inappropriate destructive behaviour by a group of people. For example, a gang may be a relatively small group of people who cooperate in criminal acts or a larger group with a formal organization. Factors that cause someone to become gangster are one with poor family background, peer influence, media exposure, weak personality trait, antisocial behavior and desires or willing to try. This social issue will cause negative impacts such as the community members will face heightened fear that they, their families, schools or businesses will become victims of
theft and violence. In addition to that, costs local, state and federal governments a substantial amount of money in prevention, response, incarceration and rehabilitation efforts. Then, let us talk about the social issue which under sexuality and gender. One of them is LGBT. LGBT is an initialism that stands for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender". It may refer to anyone who is non-heterosexual or non-cisgender, instead of exclusively to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. There are criticisms of LGBT. For example, some argue that transgender and transsexual causes are not the same as that of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people. This argument centers on the idea that transgender and transsexuality have to do with gender identity or a person's understanding of being or not being male and/or female irrespective of their sexual orientation. LGB issues can be seen as a matter of sexual orientation or attraction. On the other hand, societal attitudes towards homosexuality vary greatly in different cultures and different historical periods, as do attitudes toward sexual desire, activity and relationships in general. All cultures have their own norms regarding appropriate and inappropriate sexuality; some sanction same-sex love and sexuality, while others disapprove of such activities. However, there are still countries which accept LGBT. For instance, Iceland, Netherlands and Norway are the top three countries which accept LGBT. Last but not least, sexual harassment is also one of the social issues which under sexuality and gender. It is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promises of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. It includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. The harassers are categorized into two categories which are predatory harasser and street harasser. Predatory harasser is a person who gets sexual thrills from humiliating others while street harasser performed in public places by strangers. So, to curb this from happening or become more seriously, we may do some corporate training and the government and NGO must build an anti-harassment policy or zero-tolerance policy. To sum up, it is the responsibility of all of us to prevent these common social issues from become more and more serious in our society. Hence, all of us must take a step forward to give supports or contributions so that our society will become harmony.