The issue is that women are, well, individuals. Who knew? Some like direct honest feedback. Others don't. The same applies to men. Perhaps on average women prefer the more gentle approach rather than the more direct one, but in the end it all comes down to the individual.
The problem with a lot of these debates, IMHO, is that they're framed as a group/gender debate ("men vs. women") centred around statistics and averages, rather than as an interpersonal conflict. I have definitely been the target of "mansplaining" by more than a few men, even though I am a man myself. I'll readily believe this happens more often to women, and this is an issue, but that's an average which doesn't necessarily say all that much about the social interaction you're having right now.
Interpersonal conflicts happen all the time. Between men and men, between women and women, and between men and women. There are loads of reasons for this; mismatched expectations, misunderstandings, lack of empathy, cultural differences, or just plain personality conflicts. It's part of the human condition.
But once you start framing all these things in a context of sexism it becomes tricky business to get it right. Being accused of assholery is one thing, but being accused of sexism is quite another. No matter what you do, sooner or later you will do something wrong because we're all just blundering through all social lives making tons of mistakes all the time.
A few years ago I attended a (local) programmer meetup; one women made a presentation I quite strongly disagreed with and we had a decent discussion about it. Afterwards I realized that perhaps I came off as a tad too strong (this was also quite recently after I moved to the UK from The Netherlands, which has quite a different culture). Live and learn. I don't think I did anything wrong as such and would have voiced things pretty much the same if it had been a man, but I was afraid that it was perceived as "mansplaining" by either the presenter or some of the attendants. I don't know if I was, but it's certainly possible.
It's hard... Unfortunately a lot of the more, ehm, engaged people on this issue seem quite unwilling to listen to men about this and learn from their experiences. This entire thing is really hard and if we're ever going to fully resolve this everyone needs to listen to everyone else. Men need to listen to women, but women also need to listen to men.