Critical theory arose as a former of literary analysis. It asserts that all of the societal norms and biases of the author are reflected in the work whether deliberate or not. In a mideaval work where the husband dominates the wife it's because society was biased against women and that's reflected in the work even if the author didn't mean to be anti-feminist. This is a valid way to look at literature.

Progressives started applying this analysis to the real world even though real people aren't characters in a novel. It's one thing to say the woman wasn't the hero in a book because the author was biased against women (intentionally or not). It's another thing to say women don't all succeed because there is some societal bias holding them down.

Critical theory is somewhat self defeating because it asserts concepts like "fairness" and "equality" are societal norms and biases just like everything else. Most activists just use this as a bait and switch to say western civilization is irredeemable and must be destroyed to make way for some form of communism.

Critical theory applied to reality doesn't make any sense because in a book everyone can "win" if the author wants them to, but this isn't true in reality.