This trope tends to suffer from three double standards when portrayed in media:
- The first is that the Casanova is always male, given that women are usually shamed for having an active sex life. The comparatively rarer female version is an "aphrodite,"
but she’ll likely be portrayed as an evil character who exploits her sexuality to manipulate innocent men. The womanizing skills of the Casanova, on the other hand, will almost always be portrayed heroically. - This trope also applies almost exclusively to straight men, given that queer people with an active sex life are usually villainized in media. Meanwhile, straight men get to be portrayed as badasses for having multiple women at their beck and call. Bisexuals or demisexuals are even rarer, though not unheard of; for example Oberyn Martell.
- In the media of the Western world, the Casanova trope is also usually only applied to white men. Men of colour having, expressing or giving into their sexual desires is often portrayed negatively or Played for Laughs. Also, while white male Casanovas being with non-white women is generally portrayed as fine, men of color are often limited in a work to dating, having sex, marrying or even flirting only with women of the same nationality or skin color as them. If they do have a romantic relationship or sexual encounter with a woman of a different nationality or skin-color, it is usually held in scorn by some in-universe (and sometimes out-of-universe, unfortunately). In most countries where people of colour make up the majority, expect The Casanova to belong to the dominant ethnic group in a given country (for example, Han Chinese in China, Yamato Japanese in Japan, and Arabs in the Arabic-speaking world).
