'Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues'
(Shakespeare in Love's Labours Lost, 1588)

People say 'Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder' and that is why there is a phrase 'love is blind'. I remember my university days in IIUM. I have many friends from foreign countries especially Myanmar and Indonesia. In one outing days in the KL city with my friends Habib from Myanmar and Caman an Indonesian, we saw one odd couple passed us by in front of the Central Market's bus station. A good looking chap and a lady whom we thought to be out of that man's league. I don't know how to explain it but enough if I quote 'Beauty & the Beast' in a reversed version.

In one light argument, Caman and I were in a diplomatic agreement that 'love is blind' and that 'love feeling' is the utmost element and not the look. Habib simply replied 'I know love is blind...but shouldn't be that blind'. With that, it left us no more room to argue further but to concur instead. In another story, a friend of mine told me that there was one time when one huge ugly rich man and a beautiful young and sexy lady entered a pub hand in hand. One man inside the pub shouted 'Beauty & the Beast' and the boyfriend confronted the man and yelling at him 'How dare you call my girlfriend a beast?!' that man was taken a back and so as the people inside the pub.

Back to the Woman Rights group and the governmental Women's Development Department plans to ask the Parliament to ban "emotional violence" against women to include a husband who "tells his wife she is ugly or humiliates her until she feels emotionally pressured, the move seems to criminalize emotional abuse and will put all the husband on alert mode. One single mistake or slip of the tongue, he will end up in the court of law and jail.

I believe this move is a little bit too harsh to the husbands. To criminalise the husband's freedom of expression is 'unconstitutional'. They can be blamed but should not be penalized simply because 'his love is no longer blind'.


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http://sg.news.yahoo.com/ap/20090528/tap-as-malaysia-belittling-wives-1st-ld-b3c65ae.html

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - It soon could be a crime for Malaysian men to call their wives ugly, a women's rights group and a news report said Thursday.

The governmental Women's Development Department plans to ask Parliament to ban "emotional violence" against women, who currently have legal protection against physical assault only, The Star newspaper reported.

Women's groups told the department that husbands who "demonstrate a pattern of causing mental and psychological damage" should face counseling, fines and jail terms, Ivy Josiah, director of the Women's Aid Organization, told The Associated Press.

Offenders include a husband who "tells his wife she is ugly or humiliates her until she feels emotionally pressured," the government department's head, Noorul Ainur Mohamad Nur, said during a conference on violence against women, the newspaper reported.

Noorul Ainur said there was a need to criminalize emotional abuse because it could deeply scar a woman's dignity and self-confidence, the report said.

There were no immediate details about when Parliament would discuss the plan.

About 90 percent of some 800 women who called the Women's Aid Organization for help last year reported being psychologically abused, though some were also physically assaulted, Josiah said.

A government representative said Noorul Ainur and other officials familiar with the plan could not immediately be contacted Thursday.