I'm 62. Unlike others who have commented, I found the sexual part of the storyline creepy at the time. But, I enjoyed it immensely.

I write these stories about what TV/movies say about our culture, but they get the fewest readers.

What I find interesting is how this movie prefigures the culture we have today. In Back to the Future Marty's "superpower" is that he can use his modern, progressive brain, to understand how bullies operate and negate their power to improve society. Someone mentioned in the comments how the whole town was better once the past was changed.

Flash forward to today and all aggressive sexual behavior is taboo but instead of many young people getting married and having kids, they're getting tattoos, sex changes and going after anyone who questions how we define gender or sexuality (in a way they don't like). I'd rather have the "rapey" culture of the 1980s than the intellectualized sex negotiations of today. Maybe for the sake of population growth it's better this way.

Your article brings up important questions. I should also point out than many young men in the 1980s were very unsure of how to deal with sex. How aggressive they should be? Men did NOT want to feel like rapists. They were (are always) confused what to do.

Back to the Future deals with those insecurities. It tries to draw the line between rape and "desire". The hard truth is, no young woman wants to hear from a guy, "I don't care if we have sex, it's up to you." Because they read that as, "you're not that attractive." These are questions that each generation approaches differently.

Your article is important because it points out that every generation is f'd up about sex ;)