Aside from what’s already been mentioned, feminists are trying to breakdown beauty standards
Yes and no.
Yes, in that they want to undermine their more attractive counterparts of whom absorb the bulk of men's attention.
No, in that they themselves still want to feel beautiful. Nothing kills a feminist mentality faster than a man (a real man) telling them they're beautiful. That's really all they want to hear.
That's all this is. It's women fighting other women within their own hierarchy. It won't work. It appears to work, because women understand that it's something they're insecure about. No woman wants to be compared to someone more beautiful than she is. Just as men don't want to be undermined in their own sense of masculinity. What most women actually say when they agree with that narrative isn't "don't judge me based on my beauty" and rather "Don't make me feel insecure about my beauty", which is what most women can agree upon. So women, even most feminists, will agree that make-up is bad while they apply the "required" make-up for their shopping and "heavy duty" make-up when they expect to be in front of a camera or out on a date.
Once you define that you aren't out to make a woman feel insecure about her beauty, you can generally dispense with the "well, I don't judge anyone about looks" bullshit.
They look to be trying to do this with depictions of women in fiction, men are a bunch of horny basement dwelling nerds who need to “grow up” and accept whatever “realistic” uglification will be done to characters
I wish I could agree with you here, but I think we both know this isn't entirely true.
In regards to feminism and the portrayal of women; yes, what they're doing is atrocious, but let's also not pretend that comic books weren't primarily marketed towards an immature boy demographic. That's not wrong, but that same demographic grew up (or was supposed to have) and insisted that they be allowed to keep those same characters for their adult stories. So instead of having a 16 year old staring at a few dozen issues of scantly clad women because he's 16, you have men who are 36 staring at a few hundred issues of scantly clad women because he's a loser.
There needs to be a change in comics, so that boys can have their immature comics and grown men can have their more mature comics.
Feminists say that nerds need to grow up as a means of emasculation. It is not a point they make to help them, it is a point they make to shut them up. But society will also say that the point is...somewhat valid. Nerd culture needs to grow up. That's not easy, for many reasons, but primary counterforces to that are:
1) The industries around nerd culture don't want you to grow up, so they can keep selling you worthless shit to fill that empty void in your heart.
2) They can sell toys--yes, toys--to both grown boys and actual little boys. Even the "mature" ones are really just a form of a boy longing for true masculinity.
3) The more you focus on nerd culture, the less likely to spawn children you will be--and therefore the people who have children can keep selling you worthless crap so they can spend your money on their children.
4) Political Intersectionality, who want you to act as voting drones to pull for their policies that directly hurt you, but papers over your masculine insecurities.
Step One is for us to move beyond the immature stage of masculinity within our subculture. And I think it's something we've all struggled for a time to do. It has always been there I think. I remember growing older and wishing that games like Zelda would address more mature themes for me to relate to. They of course didn't, because Nintendo can't market that to kids. And the "mature" themes we were given by some game developers here in America wasn't so much mature masculinity as it was either distorted pieces of it or shadow aspects of boyhood.
Wider society won't allow nerds to keep what was originally made for children. As adults, we must establish heroes that are for adult men. Dramas that are meant for mature audiences. Feminists won't like it, but no one can address that as little boy nerd crap.
Even Hollywood is in on it, I would be more understanding of choosing untalented women for roles if they were attractive, instead of their politics like with Brie Larson
Hollywood never had your interests at heart. Their goal was to exploit it from the beginning, even before they went full SJW. They care about making money. They wanted to take your future away from you the moment they came up with the idea. The fact that they're now exploiting it for political purposes is just them having drank their own kool-aid.
They've actually done you a favor by showing how much they never gave a single fuck about you.