BeardofPants said:
Yeah, it's no point arguing the distinction when the historicity of the definition says otherwise (with reference to the latin root).
Quite the contrary. When languages borrow words, they don't do so by importing the entire and precise definition from the source language. They use a very general meaning as a basis for a new precise term - the link is visible but the word itself isn't a translation.
Rapere is what Roman repossessors would do - hardly anything to do with sexual violation, but is appropriate because "taking someone" is one way our retarded society defines the act of male-female vaginal intercourse. Over time - I'll assume primarily because of a need to feel "equivalent" - this has surely grown to apply equally to anal, both hetero- & homosexual, so I'll concede this much. You cannot, however, "rape" anything if you do not penetrate it - if a girl lies down on the bed & says "take me" it is clear that she only means one thing. You also cannot "rape" someone with an object that's not you. You couldn't even rape someone with your hand, even if it penetrated - because that it is not how you "take" a person sexually. Sexual violation, yes; rape, no.
Back to the corpse. Answer me this: if you wrap a slab of steak around your cock, are you raping the meat? Hardly. Are you raping the cow it came from? Not a chance. What if you cut the corpse's vagina out and penetrated that? Are you still raping the corpse? Are you even raping the vagina? You can't rape a vagina anyway, you rape a person - or a being. A corpse isn't a being, and therefore can't be raped.