Yes, there are long and troubling discussions about how so much of sexual advances are silent and how it's hard to discuss consent with those, but this story was way the hell outside of that grey area.
No means no.
That's funny, I can't think of any examples from my past which could be construed as assault. And I rather doubt you can either; implicit consent is still consent.
> Asking for a written legal waiver before planting a kiss on someone you're passionate about seems essentially where all this is leading
I think that's quite an absurd conclusion. How do we jump from "don't kiss people who don't want to be kissed" to "obtain a written legal waiver"? That's like going "you shouldn't break into someone's house...so you need a written waiver before entering, even if they're literally walking next to you and offering you a drink", because maybe you've misread the situation, and when they said "come on in, but mind the dog" they meant "go away"?
In the real world body language and conversational hints make is very clear what's going on in most cases, and in a small minority of cases when those prompts are misread, there will be a clear "no", and then you apologise and move on.
"Then I went into my own bedroom but Dave followed me there, and that’s when he first propositioned to sleep with me. I said no. I reminded Dave that he knew my then-boyfriend and that we’d just talked about him earlier that night. At this point, I led him to the door and told him he needs to leave. On the way out, he pushed himself onto me to the point where I was backed into a corner, made contact to kiss me..."
Can you honestly read that and, taking the account at face value, go "wow, Dave was just making an honest mistake; he should have been more careful and asked for a written waiver before he forcibly tried to kiss a resisting woman who had repeatedly told him no and was in the process of evicting him due to his inappropriate advances"? Really? Truly? That's your takeaway here?
The problem here, as described, isn't that he didn't get her consent in writing, its that there was no consent at all. These are not comparable things!
If you are hanging out with a friend and start getting a bit handsy, then I could see the grey area. But it the cases where it is not wanted, a simple "no", or movement away, or pushing his hands off, etc would be enough to clarify where the line is, and ignoring that would turn it into unambiguous assault.
You won't need a written legal waiver, you could simply ask if it is ok.
If you don't ask you're taking your chances that the other person reads the situation just like you do. Just yesterday a friend of mine ended up in an elevator with someone she ended up having dinner with because their flight got canceled. He tried to force himself on her in the elevator, I'm sure he thought it was ok and I'm also 100% sure that she did not give him any reason to think that kiss would be welcome. Now maybe there is a chance that such a kiss would be welcome, but if it is there is no harm in asking and if it isn't there is a lot of harm in assuming that it is welcome.
It's pretty clear cut to me. And I've never kissed any one of my former partners without making sure that such an attempt was welcome, but then again I haven't had that many opportunities to put this to the test.
Of course adding context to all those situations, it's easy to see that I or the recipient would in all probability welcome the advance, and so it is not assault, however the fine line between "assault" and "relationship" at that point is entirely down to perception, and it makes this entire area massively ugly to try and delineate.
Asking for a written legal waiver before planting a kiss on someone you're passionate about seems essentially where all this is leading, and I really can't stand the thought of that.