Yeah, I don't think anything he did was assault. I do think that with his history of speaking out on this kind of thing, I'd have expected more respectful behavior (i.e. not trying to get her to continue after she clearly said she was uncomfortable). But it worked (she blew him after the plan was to just chill on the couch), so.....
I definitely think women have to take responsibility for saying no when they mean no. If a guy asks if he can pull out his penis and you say yes, under no duress, you can't later claim that you felt like you couldn't say no because he was a big star.
And in Aziz's cause, the woman had lots of opportunities to leave. She made no mention of ever feeling threatened or like he would hurt her or anything if she attempted to leave. Also, all of her non-verbal cues mean nothing. Guys aren't paying attention enough to pick up on those. The only things that matter are when she actually told him she was uncomfortable and needed to slow down. (Now, how clear was she on that? I don't know. Did she mumble or did she say it clearly?) But his actions don't fit the image I previously had of him. (Maybe that's on me for thinking his real personally was in line with his public persona.)
Also, the culture that most men grew up with is that it is perfectly normal for the guy to talk a woman (or girl) into sex. As MIR says, this isn't going to change overnight. I recognize that. Also, I imagine it is kind of awkward to get consent at every step of the process especially for people who are not all that talkative during sex in the first place.
Hopefully the things happening now will change the mindset of the boys who are coming of age now. (Not sure if it will though.)
As far as the nonverbal cues go, I'd be willing to bet that we'll find, in due time, that at some point of arousal there has to be some biology that comes into play that makes things like this a little more difficult to pick up on.
To speak to your last point, the actual last sentence, one part of this movement and newfound time of awareness is how the inexperience of young men come into play when dealing with all of this stuff. Again, it's important to parse all of this, as in most cases the line you don't cross is big, bold, and well defined. However, ensuring that you have full consent, every step of the way, can get confusing and cumbersome if you already don't know what in the hell you're doing in the bedroom. I don't want to make excuses for the dude, like I said, I never acted like Aziz did when I was single, but he doesn't strike me as a dude that got a lot of experience before he was famous, and just because he is now, that doesn't mean he is just raking it in every night, his behaviour doesn't speak to someone getting it in on the reg. And even for Aziz, this dude was just a regular guy, then he becomes famous, and the rules on how women interact with him gets completely flipped. How many times you think that guy is told no when he gets to that point?
It's all so complicated, maybe the religiously devout have it right, you won't have to worry about being confused if you're not getting it in until your wedding night.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/the-humiliation-of-aziz-ansari/550541/
Interesting that my FB friend who posted this an hour ago has already removed it....
The feminists mob are fighting that article hard. FWIW, I think race is a factor here, just maybe not in the way the author framed it. This guy grew up as a tiny Muslim Indian in South Carolina, he went from that to a wealthy celebrity that is still a tiny Muslim Indian man. How many meaningful sexual experiences did he have before he was famous and how does his sex as a famous dude informs his interactions with women in his condo?