I feel good. I do what makes me happy. I shouldn't have had to get to 50 before that started taking place, but that's how many years I had to fight to find that place of Self and autonomy in a culture that has a lot of rules for both men and women. And I'm not alone. Most women I know never scratch the surface of this authentic place until well into their 40s at least. Is that really what you want for your daughter?
She may be too young to worry about her sexuality now, but I think it's important for you to understand the world that she will eventually be entering. Researcher Peggy Orenstein has written two books on the subject, Girls & Sex and another one called Boys & Sex. They are both taken from interviews with real young people done over several years, and are both disturbing and compassionate and important for parents to read.
As far as young women have come in standing up for themselves in most arenas of life, they still have a hard time doing that in intimate relationships. Fully half the girls she interviewed had experienced something along a spectrum of coercion to rape. Hookup culture is still about boys pleasure (cunnilingus is for real relationships, but boys expect blow jobs in casual situations). Male pleasure is prioritized by both men and women. Young men face a lot of pressures in this culture, but young women face a whole different gamut of them. As a parent, I think it would be good to understand them in a way that, by your comments, you don't seem to yet grasp.
"Despite those risks, hypersexualization is ubiquitous, so visible as to be nearly invisible: it is the water in which girls swim, the air they breathe. Whatever else they might be—athletes, artists, scientists, musicians, newscasters, politicians—they learn that they must, as a female, first and foremost project sex appeal.
Consider a report released by Princeton University in 2011 exploring the drop over the previous decade in public leadership positions held by female students. Among the reasons these über-elite young women gave for avoiding such roles was that being qualified was not enough. They needed to be “smart, driven, involved in many different activities (as are men), and, in addition, they are supposed to be pretty, sexy, thin, nice, and friendly. Or, as one alumna put it, women had to “do everything, do it well, and look ‘hot’ while doing it.” A 2013 study at Boston College, meanwhile, found that female students were graduating with lower self-esteem than when they entered the school (boys’ self-esteem rose)."
Orenstein, Peggy. Girls & Sex (p. 13). Harper Paperbacks. Kindle Edition.
Women are taught from an early age and the culture continually reinforces that their bodies do not belong to them - they belong to the world, and more specifically to the men in the world. Women must always be sexy, but at the same time are not supposed to be sexual (because then you're a slut). Women's bodies and female sexuality exist for the pleasure of men - at least that is the current messaging. You don't have to engage in conversation around that because I'm telling you that's how it is. This is not just my perception or experience - it's the experience of every single woman I know.
It's nice to think you're an individual who can make your own way in life, but that is mostly a pipe dream. Cognitive science says only about 2% of thought is conscious and the rest is culture buried deep in your subconscious and mine. And this is the culture that young people today are dealing with:
"Jock culture (or what the young men I met were more likely to call “bro culture”) is the dark underbelly of male-dominated enclaves, whether or not they formally involve athletics: all-boys’ schools, fraternity houses, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the military. Even as they promote bonding, preaching honor and integrity, such groups condition guys to treat anyone who is not “on the team” (a category that may include any woman who is not a blood relative) as the enemy—bros before hos!—justifying hostility or antagonism toward them. Loyalty is unconditional, and masculinity asserted through sharing sexual exploits, misogynist language, and homophobia."
Orenstein, Peggy. Boys & Sex (p. 21). Harper. Kindle Edition.
This is the culture that we currently live in. If you want to protect your daughter from being taken advantage of or harmed, you need to understand these things.
Wishing you the best.
