anti-recs

To be fair, that stuff is not exactly uncommon nowadays either, particularly in things like romance, and where it's faded away it's often been replaced with rape-as-luridity or rape-as-concern-trolling-plot-device-for-heroes-to-rescue-pathetic-victim-figure, I'm looking at you, Law & Order franchise and the like. There have always been notions of "good rape" and "bad rape," "real rape" and "frivolous rape," but popular boundaries in American media have shifted; there's older-than-dirt storytelling that portrays rape by a stranger as a great travesty and rape by a husband as a nonexistent concept, and then there's Veronica Mars circa the early 2000 where the female protagonist is relieved to find out it was her boyfriend who had sex with her when she was drugged, she was so worried before that she'd been raped and all. (Matters were complicated by his being under the influence too, but the driving point was more that it was okay because he and not some other guy did it.)

Of course, I'm not disagreeing with you about the 70s -- I'm just leery about proclaiming that media about sexual assault has particularly progressed, either.