I, cis white guy in the bay, was hired as a consultant to help build out a product and was pair programming with a woman founder & new engineer and made some passing comment about the CSS quality not being "ideal" or something of the sort. This was later brought up as something that they interpreted as some kind of sexism which completely caught me off guard and put me in a very awkward position of having to respond to that and explain that it was just poorly phrased, not sexism.
In the grand scheme this was very minor situation, e.g. no managers, HR, or social media involved, just between a few people on the project, but it's something I'll never forget and had colored how I interact with women going forward.
Basically I just want to avoid that ever happening again because if you're on the "No I'm not sexist" side of the argument, you've basically already lost in how society engages these days.
Not saying you weren't the subject of over-reaction, or not, but I think this is an example of sub-par feedback. It would be better to point out the issues in concrete terms, and say this is something that should be addressed, and why. And if you can't do that, you should ruminate on it until you can reify whether it is wrong, and what ought to be done, and why. Do this with anybody. If they argue with you, they'll be arguing only on technicalities, not personalities.
Communicating "this is what I think of your work, some of it is negative but isn't intended as an attack against you" (without actually using any of those words, otherwise you run into the "my human trafficking shirt" problem) in a way that you're confident your criticisms won't be used against you, it's a skill you can and should train.
But it's work. Like, okay, social stuff is a part of the job, but when you're an engineer in a room with other engineers you'd like to be able to speak your mind without constantly simulating a PR team in your brain.