Sorry Lance, no offence but that "logistical" point got to be one of the worst arguments against women in the armed forces I have seen in a while.
When I did my service in Sweden in the early 90s there were few women around, and none in my unit. Most of them were in the navy or air forces, but some women officers were in the army. Clearly I don't have experience first hand with mixed units, and certainly not in a live combat environment. The one to best give an proper answer to your point would of course be a women with army combat field experience.
I do however have repeated experience being with women on high altitude climbing expeditions and other rather long and rough mountaineering/hiking trips, and I can assure you part of those include rather hostile and inconvenient environments for prolonged time. All women so far have performed very well and have not been falling short in performance because of periods, sanitary "logistics" or lack of showers. Sanitary conditions are important for anyone, both male and female living in harsh environments, and my experience is that both know enough about this to take care of it in a rather down to earth way as individuals, when it is needed. I can't see being in the army is much different in that respect.
When it comes to genetics and evolutionary approaches I'm not sure most of your points are that relevant for a professionally trained army (not that Sweden has that in all respects, as training can be much too short
). We might all be on a genetic leash and we certainly have evolved as a species. But most serious geneticists and biologists also point out that the genetic leash is not as tight as it sometimes portrayed, and can't really be used to give direct reasons pro or contra social policies. To predict male or female behaviour in combat from an evolutionary approach is rather sketchy indeed. The idea that males would tend to do stupid things to save wounded females is frankly quite a good example of how absurd conclusions singleminded genetic/evolutionary reasoning can reach. It really is more of a blindfold than enlightening when used as the overriding compass on every issue. One must not fall in love with only one way to explain everything, just because it is a very good way to explain some things.
My line of thought is more like this. If males and females can mix it up in ordinary civil life working, competing and cooperate etc. I can't see why they shouldn't be able to do it as good or as bad in the army. I'm sure there are both benefits and drawbacks with a mixed army, but that should also be true for a male only army. I have never really seen a comparison of both drawbacks and benefits for both options, which would be a more interesting topic than what problems women would mean in the army.
Sure some "jobs" need special requirements when it comes to physical and psychological characteristics, but they are, as you say statistically spread out in the population of both male and females. That some are more common in one group, male of female, is no argument against individuals fulfilling the requirements, even if that person is from the less representative group.
Why we have conscripts in Sweden? That is the law for males over here, even if it pretty much hollow these days. When I did my service, if you refused doing your time in the army you would go to prison. Today most males that actually want to do the service are sent home again for not qualifying. A rather different approach to the conscripts! Females volunteer for military service.
cheers porphy