In my experience men are generally clueless about the impact sexual and physical male violence has on women. At a dinner party last year, the dynamics required that all the men present listened to a young woman just out of her teens share her distress about the risk of male violence to her.
They were sympathetic but thought this was either her being overly worried or just in a particularly bad place where she lived. When they started to ever so gently say these things to her, three of the other women there started enlightening the men, including their husbands, about their own experiences. It was fascinating.
(I kept my mouth shut, because I know so much about this that I can easily hammer them with statistics, but as I'm campaigning on women's rights, men tend to just dismiss what I say as biased. And it was much better coming from women just talking about their lives.)
Very quickly, a pattern emerged, and these are bright, educated men, they recognised the pattern without issue. Their shock at the reality of harassment and violence women face at the hands of men was palpable.
That they were so utterly clueless though was eye-opening to me. These men all supported women's rights. Their behaviour was respectful. (I've spent enough time with sexist men who wouldn't have cared what the women thought.) And yet, no clue.
I cannot help thinking if the dynamics had allowed them to just dismiss the young woman outright, whether they would have bothered to listen to us. Luckily, best behaviour and all that meant they had no other choice and there's now half a dozen men out there who have an inkling of the issue.
But yeah, I now take it as a given that the average man does not know.